I saw the green flash!

[seagrovelover]

Cil...that is so neat!!!! thanks for the web site, great info :clap_1:

 

[CampCreekLou]

(the myth is perpetuated........)

 

[Cil]

Lou, are you yankin' on my chain?
Check out the websites, they have pictures which I guess could be Photoshop, but I really don't think they are.
And there are other "flashers" in this thread who back me up.
Aquaticbiology, I was like you, it had been years since I'd even thought about it. That's partly why it was so cool; it took me by surprise.

 

[Ocean Lover]

(the myth is perpetuated........)

Interesting website...http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/sun_mysteries_020716-1.html

Other weird things happen when the Sun sets, but you'll need some patience and luck to spot these.

A solar pillar is a striking sight. Again, the Sun itself has little to do with the effect, other than sending earthward the necessary light.

A pillar is typically rendered in cold air by ice crystals falling from high clouds, explains Robert Nemiroff, an astrophysicist at Michigan Technological University and a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. The crystals are sometimes flat, and air resistance will cause them to float flatly, rather than knifing downward on edge. Sunlight reflects off the crystals to generate what appears to be a column of light soaring into space.

The pillar looks like it comes from the Sun, but in reality it's just a few miles away.

Finally, the rarest of all these tricks of light is the green flash. You'll recall that we decided you're at the beach, gazing out over the Pacific. You are there because it is a good place to see this rare and fleeting phenomenon. A low horizon with a long view is needed. A prairie can suffice, and an airplane will do nicely, too.

The key to the green flash mystery again lies in refraction, along with the fact that the Sun's white light is actually made of many colors.

"The Earth's atmosphere acts like a prism," Nemiroff says. "Blue is refracted the most." Red light is refracted the least. Green is somewhere in the middle.

At sunset, when refraction is most pronounced, there can actually be three images of the Sun -- a blue one on top, a green one in the middle, and a red one at the bottom. Each overlaps the others.

So why don't we see a blue flash? Because the blue light is scattered so severely that it doesn't even reach our eye, Nemiroff says. Once in a while though, and typically for less than a full second, a bit of the green light gets through.

And all the while, as you feel the sand growing cooler and prepare to bid the Sun farewell, the red light has the most success travelling unimpeded through the extra atmosphere in its evening path, which explains the general color of your final moments in Malibu.