6:08 pm.
You won’t learn much science from this week’s post but, as I’ve often said, sometimes Sky Lights is just about pretty pictures. This is one of them. On Dec 28, 2024, about an hour after sunset, my wife Sandi walked out on the deck to check the sky. She had her camera. What she photographed was a rapidly evolving sunset with the colors changing as you watched — the interval between photos in the slide show is roughly 1 minute!
The rapidly changing colors are due to multiple cloud layers beyond the horizon. The Sun has set but still illuminates our sky with light that sometimes slips between those cloud layers (the golden hues) and sometimes grazes along the layers (orange-red hues). The Sun’s rays change direction by 360°/24 hr = 15°/hr = 0.0042°/s. That might not seem very fast, but with a narrow spacing between cloud layers the sunset can evolve rapidly.
Local weather obviously has an impact on what your sunset looks like. But weather over the horizon (500 miles west of you) can also impact the display. I think that’s a nice reminder of how interconnected we are on this planet. Weather doesn’t see borders.
Next Week in Sky Lights ⇒ AI Podcast of Jan 6 Post