A Multiple Green Flash Sunset: Yes, but can your green flash do this? A green flash at sunset is a rare event that many Sun watchers pride themselves on having seen. Once thought to be a myth, a green flash is now understood to occur when the Earth's atmosphere acts like both a prism and a lens. Different atmospheric layers create altitude-variable refraction that takes light from the top of the Sun and disperses its colors, creates two images, and magnifies it in just the right way to make a thin sliver appear green just before it disappears. Pictured, though, is an even more unusual sunset. From the high-altitude Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile one day last April, the Sun was captured setting beyond an atmosphere with multiple distinct thermal layers, creating several mock images of the Sun. This time and from this location, many of those layers produced a green flash simultaneously. Just seconds after this multiple-green-flash event was caught by two well-surprised astrophotographers, the Sun set below the clouds. Image Credit & Copyright: T. Slovinský & P. Horálek (IoP Opava); CTIO, NOIRLab, NSF, AURA
[h/t Scott Horton]
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"The Soul, secure in her existence. smiles at the drawn dagger and defies its point. The stars shall fade away, the sun himself grow dim with age and nature sink in years, but thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, unhurt amid the wars of elements, the wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds." From 1713, “Cato” by Joseph Addison. This was the passage Edgar Allen Poe encrypted and challenged his readers to decipher in 1841. It was not until 1992 that a Duke University doctoral student succeeded. ∞(via metaconscious)