日出

2020年9月21日 Omega Sunrise Image Credit & Copyright: Juan Antonio Sendra Explanation: Capturing this sunrise required both luck and timing. First and foremost, precise timing was needed to capture a sailboat crossing right in front of a rising Sun. Additionally, by a lucky coincidence, the background Sun itself appears unusual — it looks like the Greek letter Omega (Ω). In reality, the Sun remained its circular self — the Omega illusion was created by sunlight refracting through warm air just above the water. Optically, the feet of the capital Omega are actually an inverted image of the Sun region just above it. Although somewhat rare, optical effects caused by the Earth’s atmosphere can make distant objects near the horizon — including the Sun and Moon —…

2020 June 15 A Ring of Fire Sunrise Solar Eclipse Video Credit: Colin Legg & Geoff Sims; Music: Peter Nanasi Explanation: What’s rising above the horizon behind those clouds? It’s the Sun. Most sunrises don’t look like this, though, because most sunrises don’t include the Moon. In the early morning of 2013 May 10, however, from Western Australia, the Moon was between the Earth and the rising Sun. At times, it would be hard for the uninformed to understand what was happening. In an annular eclipse, the Moon is too far from the Earth to block the entire Sun, and at most leaves a ring of fire where sunlight pours out around every edge of the Moon. The featured time-lapse video also recorded the eclipse…

2019 December 28 A Distorted Sunrise Eclipse Image Credit & Copyright: Elias Chasiotis Explanation: Yes, but have you ever seen a sunrise like this? Here, after initial cloudiness, the Sun appeared to rise in two pieces and during partial eclipse, causing the photographer to describe it as the most stunning sunrise of his life. The dark circle near the top of the atmospherically-reddened Sun is the Moon — but so is the dark peak just below it. This is because along the way, the Earth’s atmosphere had an inversion layer of unusually warm air which acted like a gigantic lens and created a second image. For a normal sunrise or sunset, this rare phenomenon of atmospheric optics is known as the Etrucan vase effect. The…