Cindy Tripp, age 9, of Rockford, Illinois, for her question:

Why are rainbows always in the eastern part of the sky?

This question must come from someone who is much too busy to look up at the sky during the morning. The glimmering rainbow appears in the eastern part of the sky only during the afternoon, when the sun is dipping down in the west. The day, of course, must be showery. The sun must be shining from a clear patch of blue and over in the opposite part of the sky a cloud must be weeping a shower of raindrops. The falling raindrops act like zillions of shiny little mirrors: When the slanting rays of the sun strike them from across the sky, the raindrop mirros reflect ribbons of color and a rainbow arches over the heavens.

The same weather picture may happen in the morning. But now the sun is rising in the east. The rainy cloud must be in an opposite part of the sky, which now is the west. Rainbows that appear in the early morning are in the western part of the sky    and they are just as glamorous as those that appear in the east late in the day.