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Green Flash

en.wikipedia.org

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There is a fantastic French film by Eric Rohmer called Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray) where this phenomenon is a central element to the story.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Green_Ray_(film)

I cannot recommend this film highly enough. Beautifully shot, heartfelt, and often hilarious dialogue. I discovered Rohmer and this film through a screening Richard Linklater and the Austin Film Society hosted. Linklater introduced the film and he hosted a nice audience discussion afterwards (you can watch his introduction and the audience discussion here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTfV3tA054s)

Also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Green_Ray

The Green Ray (French: Le Rayon vert) is a novel by the French writer Jules Verne published in 1882 and named after the optical phenomenon of the same name.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to commission a boat in St. Augustine Florida and then sail it down to Puerto Rico together with three other guys which had done it before. I remember them talking about this green flash appearing in the horizon just as the sun went down. Our trip lasted almost 9 days and I spent every single day staring at the horizon to hopefully get a glance at it. On like the 5th day I did, definitely felt kinda "magical" to experience that. After the sun went down, the nights that we had a clear sky we'd also be treated pretty great. Being on 43 feet sailboat for 9 days with nothing in sight but water and the occasional pod of dolphins is something not many people will ever experience, feel very fortunate.

Former National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield and I used to sneak up to the rooftop looking for the Green Flash while building our new business. It was his dream to see it in his lifetime. We never did see the flash, but the peaceful anticipation of going up there each day is perhaps my favorite memory from that startup experience.

There are some mountainous areas where if you start walking down the slope at just the right time during sunset, keeping a mountain edge between yourself and the mountain you can observe this effect continuously for up to 5 minutes or so.

It can be much more than just a point or ray. One summer I was on an endurance motorcycle ride over the Los Angeles Mountains, altitude about 3500'. As dawn was about to turn into sunrise the entire sky flashed green. Lasted less than a second. Pretty awesome experience. Terrain in that direction is mostly flat desert once off the mountain.

Ahh such an evasive phenomenon! I live in Santa Barbara for 6 years now and watch the sunset close to every evening and have yet to witness this occur. I am definitely slowly losing my eyesight trying to see this though.

I lived in Pismo Beach for a year and for one week-long period I think I saw it every day. It's subtle and hard to differentiate from just going blind looking at the Sun.

I have been lucky enough to see the green flash myself recently, having been on the lookout for something like 20 years. It was definitely not subtle. It was a bright green flash, startling and breathtaking, lasting for a couple of seconds. If you have seen it, you know you have seen it.

Although very minimalistic

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~aty/index.html

is the best presentation I know about the effect.

on a similar note: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_dogs

That reminds me of a story when I was a child. Perhaps seven or eight years old.

I was playing with some kids outside, and saw a sundog. I didn't know what it was, and I was very curious about it. There were three suns in the sky! Something was very strange.

I tried to express my wonder to the other kinds. I tried to make them look at the sky and speculate about what's going on. Not only did they lack any interest for the phenomenon, they quickly started to mock me, and I became the crazy kid on the block.

I stopped playing with children for the rest of my childhood.

I've seen moon dogs and moon rings. Very interesting things to learn about. Seems to depend on the atmosphere, how much frozen moisture is in it, etc.

I've seen these once -- a couple years ago, it was pretty neat. I'd only read about it and seen it in photos before.

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