An Insanely Colorful Orb

Photo date: May 8, 2015. Photographer: Mark Mahin.

The photo below was taken while photographing pure, clean water drops falling against a black background.

This is perhaps the most colorful orb I have ever photographed. If you look closely, you can seem to see a face (with two eyes and a smile).

Colors such as these in a water drop are inexplicable. Diffraction can sometimes make color stripes, but it makes weak colors (like the pale colors of a sky rainbow), usually around the edges of a circular object. If you do a Google search for "water drop with stripes," the only relevant images you will find are one or two showing a water drop photographed against a striped background, something that is not comparable to this image taken against a black background.