You can see alpenglow and green flashes all over the world the Old Man of the Lake, by contrast, has a specific zipcode. The Old Man of the Lake bobbing above the surface of Crater Lake. Nothing better with which to toast a sunset-even one sans green flash. Word to the (hop-loving) wise: The phenomenon also gives its name to a mighty fine San Diego craft brewery. Caused by atmospheric refraction, this brief, cosmic signal flare is most easily seen along a level horizon from an elevated vantage (an ocean skyline being among the most promising stages for green-flash spectacles) and under clear, stable atmospheric conditions. The Green FlashĪ more rarely seen vision around dawn or dusk, the green flash is a fleeting disk, blotch, or bolt of emerald color wrapping up sundown or heralding sunrise. Not an unusual sight by any means-yet every time you experience it, it seems (for a moment) like the most flat-out gorgeous thing ever. ![]() This ethereal salmon-pink or pale-fire red is best appreciated on bare rock walls, crags, and snowy horns, or on a giant rampart of twilight cumulus. (If the Sun’s up, in other words, it isn’t alpenglow.) Strictly speaking, alpenglow is the reflection of sunlight along the skyline opposite the just-set or nearly risen Sun. AlpenglowĪlpenglow clinging to a jagged mountain peak.Ĭampers and climbers in the mountains know alpenglow well, even if it’s sometimes mistakenly applied to more general, garden-variety sunrise and sunset ambience. Let these "common miracles" be an inspiration to seek out awe on the trail each and every day of the year-and in as many forms as possible. They’re random as can be, running the whole animal-vegetable-mineral gamut and claiming no common thread aside from their singular awesomeness. Most of these are much more regularly seen than a total solar eclipse some you can appreciate in many different places, while others have a more restricted geography. Here, we’ve pulled together a motley lineup of equally cool phenomena you might put on your bucket list. But hey, here’s a friendly reminder that, while the moon’s silhouette engulfing the sun is truly awesome in the oldest sense of the word, it isn’t the be-all, end-all when it comes to stirring natural wonders. It’s certainly worth tracking down a total solar eclipse if you can, no question-whether or not you’re the sort who’ll go to the far ends of the Earth to witness it. (Check out NASA’s map of the April 2024 total solar eclipse right here to start strategizing.) It’s only seven years until the next total solar eclipse will cast its pall over the U.S., and given the clockwork predictability of this celestial show (and the clockwork predictability of the umbraphilic hordes it’ll attract), consider ironing down some travel plans for it now. And, of course, that smoldering black sun-hole, a sight that’s literally burned into the gray matter.Ī total solar eclipse-one of the more gobsmacking spectacles viewable on terra firma. ![]() Our out-in-the-sagebrush eclipse vantage revealed such primal happenings as a gang of turkey vultures winging to roost in the gathering day-darkness a swarm of mosquitoes materializing demonically with the ebbing temperature and one mountain range in the umbra’s heart black-rimmed against the southwest sky during totality, and another outside the shadow to the northeast shining as at daybreak. ![]() Having experienced the Great American Eclipse on the northern frontier of the path of totality, I can attest to the basically indescribable (well, unless you’re Annie Dillard) dream-world fleetingly made inside the umbra. What you see is much more convincing than any wild-eyed theory you may know.” I will heartily second this early passage: “Usually it is a bit of a trick to keep your knowledge from blinding you. I sure as hell won’t try approaching its incantatory power. before 2017) in her Teaching a Stone to Talk for a description of the sheer strangeness of totality. You can’t beat Annie Dillard’s account of the 1979 total solar eclipse (the last one seen anywhere in the U.S. The Great American Eclipse, they called it, and the couple minutes of its maximum totality capped what felt like an unprecedented crescendo of pre-eclipse coverage. From Oregon to South Carolina, observers in the 71-mile-wide swath of totality saw the sun’s fireball snuffed out by the moon, creating one of the more gobsmacking spectacles viewable on terra firma: a black circle where our home star should be, rimmed with coronal flame and glaring down from an eerily shrouded daytime sky. in the first total solar eclipse to hit coast-to-coast in the country since 1918. In the late summer of 2017, a great cosmic shadow steamrolled across the contiguous U.S.
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