Althouse: Green sunset on Picnic Point...

August 10, 2014

Green sunset on Picnic Point...

... with the camera accidentally set to "impressive art."

13 comments:

John Burgess said...: So does the accident make the camera the copyright holder on the photo?; 8/10/14, 7:46 PM
traditionalguy said...: We envy you.; 8/10/14, 7:50 PM
rhhardin said...: Antisunset.; 8/10/14, 8:31 PM
Original Mike said...: I see Tinky-Winky.; 8/10/14, 10:35 PM
sunsong said...: beautiful; 8/10/14, 10:36 PM
George M. Spencer said...: "Impressive Art" = Pretentious bullshit.; 8/11/14, 6:04 AM
Clyde said...: There has to be some kind of a political metaphor here, with the right side of the path being as carefully manicured as one of Obama's golf courses, while the left side is rough and overgrown, the perfect place to trap a golf ball or an unwary president. I'm guessing it represents ISIS.; 8/11/14, 8:14 AM
Ann Althouse said...: … long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear…; 8/11/14, 9:59 AM
stevefromva said...: Thought maybe you had gone to Ireland.; 8/11/14, 10:28 AM
Stephen A. Meigs said...: An effect of the camera settings or some sort of extremely rare green flash? The top sliver of the sun near sunset is typically greenish, because green light gets refracted up more than red light (and blue light gets scattered away). This is not noticeable ordinarily, but occasionally high temperature gradients near the surface can produce mirages, which magnify in the zone where the inverted image in the mirage meets the non-inverted image. When the top sliver of the sun aligns with this magnifaction zone, it can produce a "green flash". But in the green flash photos I've seen, the sun is closer to the horizon, so I'm guessing that is just some simulated filter effect caused by the camera settings. If you have doubts, maybe you should try to duplicate the photo tonight with the same camera settings; green flashes are sufficiently rare that if it happens again I'd say you can be confident it's just simulated. I was just thinking about superior mirages yesterday after looking at a Smithsonian channel documentary on the Titanic suggesting that superior mirages might have been partly to blame for the disaster. Perhaps some sort of meaningful spookiness about that sort of thing, regardless of how the Titanic sank.

In an inversion duct, light can refract from one edge to the other to go long distances rather like light in a fiberoptic cable. Similarly, if temperature is increasing at about .11 celsius per meter of elevation in a temperature inversion horizontal light will bend down so it curves parallel to the earth, producing "circulating rays". With such high temperature inversions one can see very distant objects. E.g., occasionally people in Grand Haven Michigan can see the lights of Milwaukee 75 miles away.; 8/11/14, 11:02 AM
Christy said...: I see a marvelous landscape quilt from that photo, with perhaps a coral Sun.; 8/11/14, 6:06 PM
Ann Althouse said...: @Stephen Fascinating! Thanks.; 8/11/14, 11:05 PM
Meade said...: Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther….And one fine morning —-

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.; 8/12/14, 10:45 AM