Suddenly, there it was: a vibrant rainbow that appeared above the rooftops across the street from our apartment, following a brief but forceful rain shower last Thursday.

The rainbow was a vividly colored arc that stretched out indefinitely across the sky – it actually stretched further across and down than I could see by just looking out our windows. I quickly grabbed my camera and snapped a few shots, unconvinced that it would still be there if I tried to make it to the street level to seek out a different vantage point.

Chris saw it, too, and he also thought it was a giant, single arc of a rainbow. That’s what it appeared to be to the naked eye.

But, applying the magic of the digital darkroom later to the photos I’d snapped — i.e., in tweaking the contrast of the photos on the computer — I discovered the secret of the rainbow that had been hidden from our eyes. You can see the secret in the images below: a “hidden” double rainbow.   You can see traces of a second arc in all of the images below.

BTW, note that while the photo with the birds has had the colors darkened slightly to enhance the second rainbow, I did not tweak the colors on the other photos.