Last week despite driving 80 miles to the east, trying to outrun an encroaching cloud-bank, I still missed out on the sunset partial eclipse. Although the main event was obscured, my practice shots taken the day before yielded evidence of an interesting atmospheric sunset phenomenon.
As the sun gets lower in the sky it shines through denser layers of atmosphere. The thicker atmosphere's refractive properties have a prismatic effect on the Sun, allowing its image to be separated into its component colors. Meaning the sun's red wavelengths set first and the blue-green set last. The first image shows the red breaking away at the bottom.
Later as the solar disk was slipping below the horizon the green wavelengths of light were lingering above the Sun.
Over the past week a massive sunspot complex, the size of Jupiter has been making its way across the face of the Sun. Today I noticed that the sunspots could be seen through thickening clouds and was able to get some photos with the clouds acting as a solar filter.
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