Occasionally a shower may happen at sunrise or sunset, where the shorter wavelengths like blue and green have been scattered and essentially removed from the spectrum. Further scattering may occur due to the rain, and the result can be the rare and dramatic monochrome rainbow.

A moonbow (also known as a lunar rainbow, white rainbow, lunar bow, or space rainbow) is a rainbow produced by light reflected off the surface of the moon rather than from direct sunlight. Moonbows are relatively faint, due to the smaller amount of light reflected from the surface of the moon. They are always in the opposite part of the sky from the moon. Because the light is usually too faint to excite the cone color receptors in human eyes, it is difficult for the human eye to discern colors in a moonbow. As a result, they often appear to be white. However, the colors in a moonbow do appear in long exposure photographs.

Photograph of a spray moonbow (lunar rainbow)

A true moonbow is lit by the Moon itself, not directly by the Sun. In contrast, a colored rainbow (or a white fogbow) seen when the sun is rising or setting, or in twilight, is not a moonbow because it is still produced by sunlight. Moonbows have been mentioned at least since Aristotle's Meteorology (circa 350 BC), and also in an 1847 publication.

A colored circle around the moon is not a moonbow it is usually a 22° halo produced by refraction through hexagonal ice crystals in cirrus cloud. Colored rings close to the moon are a corona, a diffraction phenomenon produced by very small water droplets or ice crystals in clouds.

Moonbows are most easily viewed when the moon is near to full (when it is brightest). For true moonbows, other than those produced by waterfalls or sprays, the moon must be low in the sky (less than 42 degrees and preferably lower) and the sky must be dark. And, of course, there must be rain falling opposite the moon. This combination of requirements makes moonbows much more rare than rainbows produced by the sun.