Last night, on a homeward bound flight, I had a window seat looking west. I had the shutter closed for the heat after takeoff, but kept an eye on the view every once in a while. Once the sun got particularly red, I decided to watch it go down. I though such a clear day might get me a chance to see that mythical optical phenomenon.
Sure enough, right at the very end, the very last sliver of the sun’s disk popped from blood red to kelly green and then it was gone in an instant.
It wasn’t very bright, didn’t light up the sky or summon sea monsters. Just to see even a hint of green was a jaw dropping moment.
When I lived in Chile, I had an unobstructed view of the sun setting over the Pacific every night for a year, and I never got tired of watching the green flash.
I have only seen one. I’ll never be able to see one as well again.
Was West bound at 8500 feet approx 85 miles East of the Franklin Mtn’s & a bit West of Guadalupe Peak in the company photo plane, a C - 310 Turbo Q model. It was dusk with the sun about to go behind a ridge of the Franklin’s.
Where we were the ridge looked pretty flat so I swung a bit South picking up speed in a shallow decent. Turned North so we could both look out the left side pilot window, hauled back into a 2 G pull up and rode the flash up as fast as we could.
WOW !!!
That far on a near perfect clear night with a good sharp ridge, the prism effect was wider that I would have thought at that distance and with us going up with it, we were in the ‘green’ for a breath taking amount of time. Was way more than a ‘blink’ but I don’t think it was a whole second.
The fat green part at the center was really big and the spread was really sharp. Since it was a Mtn. ridge, we did not have as wide a view as using the ocean horizon but the flash was big enough so that at the end of the flash along with our fast climb rater we got to see a 'blink’s worth of it stretching North & South.
The rest of the run into El Paso was mundane. This was in the mid 1980’s. Need to get the log book out to see for sure.
I’ve always wanted to, and have gone out of my way to see one, but never have.
We used to assign a calculation about its duration for an opticvs course I was TA for. I’ve seen pictures and videos of them, but have never been fortunate enough to see it myself.
I saw the green flash exactly once, oddly enough very near Encinitas. (The town not the member, though I suppose she might have been nearby too.) Before that, I was sort of skeptical that there really was such a thing. You need a very clear day, an even horizon (preferably the ocean), and not to stare at the sun as it goes down.
