Photographs of Lunar Rainbows are rare. Photos of a Lunar Rainbow with Lightning are more so. I am unaware of any other existing photo such as this and I'm endeavouring to find out if any others are known to exist. But it's likely that there are others.

The rainbow is rather faint and shows little to no color but was noticable enough to draw my attention to it. City lights from Darwin (to my back) gives the image its green tinge and was competing with the moon light. A second and third (just) supernumerary arc can be seen in the centre of the photo. The rain and cloud mist is darker on the outside of the arc (right) forming the so-called Alexander's dark band.

The contrast here has been increased slightly from the original transparency. Multiple flashing of nearby lightning and city light has decreased the contrast of the rainbow / scene, particularly being a long time exposure. Older monitors may have difficulty in showing the differences in the subtle tones and shades.

This image was initially overlooked and fogotten in the editing of some hundreds of frames I shot in Darwin. Many frames usually end up having little or even no lightning at all. In editing I was thinking primarily of the most successful lightning images only and it very nearly ended up in the reject bin. I'm lucky I didn't discard it as I once did to a 'Sun Pillar' shot thinking it was a defective image (lens flare) in the day's before I knew better.

I vaguely remember actually shooting it, or what I saw visually, however it must have been bright enough to draw my attention to it and zoom in on that particular spot. I do remember though that I was dissapointed that I didn't get a good strike or two before the shutter closed (on Auto exposure).

There was so much lightning going on at the time, mostly overhead, that the significance of the rainbow / arc was mostly forgotten. Also, it was during this exposure (or the one before) that I observed a GREEN FIREBALL almost directly overhead and heading South in the direction of the storm and towards where I was facing. It had no tail and was travelling a bit slower than a normal meteor and too fast to be a plane or satellite. It appeared to be much higher than the storm clouds and was visible for only 1 - 2 seconds in a gap between the clouds. It was either a fairly common green meteor (fireball) or perhaps a form of Ball Lightning jumping from one thunderstorm cell to another as I have read about before.

Exposure was around 1 minute at f5.6/ with Fuji Velvia 50 ASA. Nikon F3 with 35 -105mm lens at about 105mm setting.

Full moon occurred about 36 hours later on 20 Dec 2002.