Red sun
I happened to go outside yesterday a little while before the sun was due to set, and I saw a most extraordinary thing: the sun, very low in the sky, looked exactly like a bright red ball. Not orange, as it sometimes does at sunset time. Not pinkish. Blood-red, and very large because it was near the horizon.
It was one of the most extraordinary things I’ve ever seen in my life. It was also rather frightening, although I realized it must be connected to some unusual atmospheric conditions. And so it was, as this article from a Chicago newspaper explains:
The sun has appeared with a red hue across much of the northern United States this week due to smoke from wildfires on the West Coast and in Canada.
The smoke has blown all the way across the continent due to air currents in the upper atmosphere and has even caused an air quality advisory for some areas.
The smoke essentially acts like an Instagram filter for the sky – sunlight naturally interacts with very small particles in the atmosphere and scatters colors in the visible spectrum. With more scattering taking place than usual, red (the color with the longest wavelength) appears more prominently.
It wasn’t just the red color that was odd, although that was the strangest thing. The sun also had a more circular appearance with sharper borders than usual, because there were no rays emanating from it.
It’s an extremely strange feeling to see a phenomenon so unusual affecting something you see nearly every day. It’s not hard to understand how humans of long ago felt that such things were omens of great import.
Unfortunately, by the time I stopped gaping and thought to try to take a photo, the sun had pretty much disappeared behind the trees near the horizon. But the article at the link above has an older photo that captures exactly what the sun looked like here yesterday, and this Toronto video captures it as well (except a smaller sun, higher in the sky):
I learned about dust and refraction and wavelength and stuff in high school, but I’m going with “portentous omen” on this one.
Wildfires? That’s just what they’d like you to think!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3_V_-dGwNo
Another interesting phenomenon is the “Green Flash” as the sun sets in the Pacific. It is not easy to see and lasts for only an instant as the sun sets.
https://weather.com/science/weather-explainers/news/2018-02-07-green-flash-sunrise-sunset
The paintings that were created during 1816 (the infamous “Year Without A Summer”) often depicted a sort of baleful red sun hanging in a grim sky. A massive erruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 sent so much ash and dust into the atmosphere that it caused a brief global cooling event. Colder temperatures lead to all sorts of crops failing, snow in May, and frosts in July ect. The daytime skies were generally dark and gloomy. The effect this had on art and literature created during the period was pretty significant. As one example, Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstien during this period.
Several years ago I took my wife to the top of Rendezvous peak in Wyoming as it was only 100 miles or so off our travel route. It was supposed to look like this.
Alas, there were summer forest fires in Idaho blowing a haze of smoke over the whole region. We had some fun anyway.
Growing up in Denver, seeing that sort of sun was not an unusual event with the yearly summer fires in the mountains. Along with the occasional smoking pine cone landing in our yard.
I can’t see the setting sun. Too many trees in the way.
Unfortunately, by the time I stopped gaping and thought to try to take a photo, the sun had pretty much disappeared behind the trees near the horizon.
–neo
This is actually a reason given by many who witness UFOs. Take it as you will.
We had Code Orange air quality alerts here in central NC for several days last week, because of haze from the western wildfires. We went out to do yard work and came in coughing, sneezing, and fighting headaches.
Would have been interesting to view thru a welding helmet. I have viewed a couple of Mercury transits across the sun with my helmet, though the lens is not totaly up to the task as I got a brief bright light blind spot when I looked away.
The morning sun is shining like a . . .
Red Rubber Ball by The Cyrkle (co-written by Paul Simon)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emx6dU7suvg
A top-10er 55 years ago this very month!
In the West, sunsets during fire season can be spectacular. As long as the fire is not threatening your home. My first summer in Utah and I am getting smoke from CA, Oregon and ID, as well as some local ones.
With all this going on its a wonder that anyone gives a damn about carbon emissions from our puny machines.
The atmosphere scatters blue light about 10 times more than it scatters red. That’s why the sky appears blue. It’s also why the sun appears so red at sunrise and sunset, all the blue light is scattered and the red comes thru.
Oh, good, an “Instagram filter”.
That is so clarifying.
Have not used it, never will.
What happened to conventional physics, refraction, etc.? We just have to make the dodoes dependent on social media.
Don’t get me started on Instagram now… I reckon its influence is more pernicious than FaceBook.
Pingback:If we had believed in omens…
Neo- I left this thought and link on American Digest as well. They try to blame it on climate change whereas the real cause is the ignorant, emotionally infantile management of forestry that has held sway as Progressives have assumed the arrogant position that they can control everything – including nature. They put out the small brush fires so long that there is now enough fuel built up to incinerate the trees and the soil itself. This is the perfect metaphor for what is happening to our politics. The whole January 6th inquisition and the destruction of civic order and republican balance of the last year are burning the very soil in which the republic is rooted. There is indeed a red sun rising.
The saddest thing is that even they don’t believe in these absurd and nihilistic ideas they stand behind. They are doing it for personal gain and power- https://thedeeperthought.com/2021/07/24/beware-the-ideology-pimps/
Red Rubber Ball by Cyrkle on 1966 Columbia 45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9aHrgtf2zY
Red Rubber Ball
I should have known you’d bid me farewell
There’s a lesson to be learned from this and I learned it very well
Now I know you’re not the only starfish in the sea
If I never hear your name again, it’s all the same to me
And I think it’s gonna be all right
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin’ sun is shinin’ like a red rubber ball
You never care for secrets I confide
For you I’m just an ornament, somethin’ for your pride
Always runnin’, never carin’, that’s the life you live
Stolen minutes of your time were all ya had to give
And I think it’s gonna be all right
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin’ sun is shinin’ like a red rubber ball
The story’s in the past with nothin’ to recall
I’ve got my life to live and I don’t need you at all
The roller-coaster ride we took is nearly at an end
I bought my ticket with my tears, that’s all I’m gonna spend
And I think it’s gonna be all right
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin’ sun is shinin’ like a red rubber ball
Oh, oh, oh, I think it’s gonna be all right
Yeah, the worst is over now
The mornin’ sun is shinin’ like a red rubber ball