Just in Case You Ran out of Things to Take Pictures of in Yosemite – Moonbows!

Is it moonbow time already? I gotta remember to put this stuff on my calendar for next year. First dogwoods blooming and now moonbows. Good thing I’m on vacation next week.

Merced Sun Star: At night. Near both the upper and the lower falls. With the dark blue velvety, star-studded sky above, and lots of watery mist below …

Yet only for a few hours of a very few nights during the full moon in springtime and sometimes early summer, will a bow appear in the moonlight.
Often referred to as a lunar rainbow or white rainbow, in the early 1900s John Muir wrote about the “elusive, ethereal moonbow” in his book, “The Yosemite”:

“This grand arc of color, glowing in mild, shapely beauty in so weird and huge a chamber of night shadows, and amid the rush and roar and tumultuous dashing of this thunder-voiced fall, is one of the most impressive and most cheering of all the blessed mountain evangels.”

For about three years now, Brent Gilstrap has been photographing moonbows in Yosemite. “What I see with the unaided eye is a bright, banded arc hanging in the mist,” says Gilstrap. “Imagine seeing a rainbow in a black and white photograph — that should give you an idea of what it looks like. Seen from close up at the Lower Yosemite Falls bridge, the bow can seem huge and mysterious, as if it were being projected onto the mist.”