A grandchild’s crayon drawing decorates our fridge. A big round Sun with a smiley face.
Articles with Sun
Coronal holes in the sun's atmosphere • (NASA/GSFC/SDO)
Photo by Cristofer Maximilian on Unsplash
The spinning Earth keeps time for us
Just back from Europe. I’ve reset my watch, turned the small hand back five hours. Reset the clock in my laptop. There’s one clock I can’t reset so quickly — the one inside my body, the tick-tocking proteins that tell my body when to wake and sleep.
The surface of the Sun as imaged by TRACE • NASA/LMSAL (Public Domain)
Seeing the sun, feeling the fire
“Knowledge has killed the Sun, making it a ball of gas with spots,” wrote D. H. Lawrence in one of his crankier, anti-science moments. Boy, he couldn’t have been more wrong.
Mosaic image of the Sun provided by TRACE • NASA (Public Domain)
TRACE photos let us perceive the Sun’s power
“Knowledge has killed the Sun, making it a ball of gas with spots,” wrote D. H. Lawrence in one of his crankier anti-science moments. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The green flash at sunrise • Photo by Luis Argerich (CC BY-NC 2.0)
The quest for the flash
Morning. The sky mostly clear to the far horizon, just a few wisps of cloud far out there over the sea where the sun will soon rise. The air is tinged pink, orange, and yellow, like layers of sugar icing on the turquoise sea.
A green flash at sunset • Images by Brocken Inaglory (CC BY-SA 3.0)
In pursuit of the elusive, ephemeral green flash
The sky is full of tricks of light. Daytime radiances include rainbows, sun dogs, coronas, and glories. Recently, from the coast of Alaska, I saw a circumzenithal arc, the rare and famous “backwards rainbow” that appears high overhead. At nighttime add moon bows, noctilucent clouds, the gegenschein, and zodiacal light.
The green flash at sunset • ESO/G. Lombardi (CC By 3.0)
Elusive beauty of the green flash
For 20 years I have looked for the green flash. I have looked from mountain tops and from canyon rims. I have looked from the coasts of two continents. I have looked at sunrise and I have looked at sunset. I have not seen it.