The Green Flash at Sunset

Most people have never seen the Green Flash at sunset, but Linda and I have seen it once--a couple years ago on a late summer or early fall day. We had eaten supper at the Firehouse Winery right at lakeside in the town of Geneva-on-the-Lake in Ashtabula County, Ohio. After dinner we climbed down the rickety cast-iron steps to watch the sunset on the small pier jutting out into Lake Erie. The day was cloudless with very low humidity and the sun began setting over the lake in the west. As a joke, we always looked for the "Green Flash" in such situations. I had read about it in one of Chet Raymo's books ("Honey from Stone," I believe). But we had begun to think that this green flash was a myth, and that it was not ever to be seen. And then, for a second or so, we saw it, clear as could be. We felt incredibly lucky, incredibly blessed. It was like the Rainbow Sign in the Old Testament, a sign of hope.

I thought of this because of a little article in yesterday's Plain Dealer (February 2, 2009) in the column by Bill Sones and Rich Sones called "Strange but True." The article quoted lines by Jules Verne regarding the green flash: 'If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope." The article also mentions web pages of San Diego State University astronomer Andrew T. Young called "An Introduction to Green Flashes" where the physics of this phenomenon is explained (http://mintaka.sdsu.edu/GF/).

The Green Flash is a phenomenon that delights both astrophysicists and poets. It's a sign of Hope.