Abstract
AT Baveno (Lago Maggiore) on the evening of July 10, when the sun was setting behind the mountains in the north western quarter of the horizon, a number of bright streaks of light appeared to radiate from behind a bank of clouds in exactly the opposite quarter of the sky. As these streaks were very bright near the point from which they apparently emanated and gradually faded away with increasing distance from that point, the effect was to produce the impression that the sun had set in the south-east instead of in the north-west. The explanation of the phenomenon is perfectly simple, being that the beams of sunlight, cut off by clouds and mountains, had travelled overhead through a clear atmosphere and, reaching the hazy air over the plains of Lombardy, had illuminated this air, which was especially thick at a point opposite the sun, the streaks appearing to converge to a vanishing point by the laws of perspective. The effect no doubt occurs whenever the necessary conditions prevail, viz., banks of clouds or mountains in the direction of the setting sun, a clear sky overhead and a thick atmosphere in the quarter opposite the sun.
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BRYAN, G. Sunset Effects. Nature 66, 390 (1902). https://doi.org/10.1038/066390b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/066390b0
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