The Sky-Glows

Abstract

FROM the great purity of the sky this evening, and from the flatness of the horizon westwards, on the line of the Great Northern Railway between Huntingdon and Hitchin, the sunset glow was of a very beautiful description. At five minutes before six (watch-time, three or four minutes slow) the sun set; and it was no sooner hidden than a parhelion-like patch of white light, 6° or 8° in diameter, brighter than the rest of the sky, occupied a place 10° or 15° above the sunset point of the horizon, and continued shining there with pearly brightness for about ten minutes. The horizon-line became edged at the same time with bright red, melting abruptly away upwards into orange, and higher up into a field of yellow light round the lucid spot. At 6.5 this spot's white light began to acquire a rosy tinge, and during the next ten minutes, until 6.15, it became intensely rose-coloured, preserving its definite place unchanged in the upper expanse of yellow; a vivid golden oriole-yellow stripe some degrees broad divided it from the red fringe along the horizon, the dazzling gold colour shading exquisitely into the fiery red below and rosy red above, and deriving itself from the latter a bronze-like greenish cast in its bright golden hue by contrast.