Abstract
So much has been written about the green-ray at sunset that I am somewhat diffident about adding anything. But as I find myself unable to accept the orthodox explanation of the phenomenon usually seen I write this note. This phenomenon, as seen by me on several occasions during the last summer on my way to Australia, always consisted in the last segment of the red sun before disappearance becoming a bright green (without any transition through intermediate tints); this green was as nearly as could be judged the complementary to the red of the sun itself. On one occasion I shut my eyes immediately after the green tint appeared, and it remained visible. There could be no doubt that what I saw was the purely subjective after-image of the disappearing segment of the sun. Of course, if this is so, it should be easy to set up a laboratory experiment to imitate the natural phenomenon; and on returning I asked Mr. E. Talbot Paris, research student in this department, to arrange an experiment in illustration. An eccentric hole was made in a disc mounted on an axle. Red glass or gelatine film was fixed over the hole, and a bright light placed behind illuminated the film and produced thereby a miniature sun, which by slow rotation, could be made to “set” behind an interposed card. At the instant of setting, the artificial sun exhibited an exact reproduction of the phenomenon of the green-ray. It was easily possible in this way to obtain a red-ray using a green sun, or a blue-ray with a yellow sun, and so on.
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PORTER, A. The Green Flash. Nature 94, 672 (1915). https://doi.org/10.1038/094672a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/094672a0
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