Every evening, all around the Caribbean, friends gather in the warm glow of sunset to gaze upon the clear horizon in the hope that they will witness one of the most elusive and fleeting visions known to man – the Green Flash.
While a sighting of this phenomenum is often written off a being rum-induced, the Green Flash is really a scientifically explainable occurrence having to do with the refraction of the setting sunlight and the air density at the horizon.
As the upper rim of the setting sun approaches the horizon, it begins to spread into a thin bar of light, then runs through the spectrum of light. The red sun disappears beneath the horizon first with the red color being refracted, or bent, the least. Next the yellows and oranges are absorbed by the ozone and disappear. The blues and violets are scattered by the atmosphere leaving the last color, green, to hang on the horizon. And in a moment, it too is gone leaving only a green blur in your vision.
In his 1882 novel “Le Rayon Vert” (The Green Flash), Jules Verne described the Green Flash as “a green ray, but of a marvelous green, a green which no painter could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which nature, neither in the varied tints of vegetation nor in the shades of the most limpid seas could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope.”
For Jules Verne, those lucky enough to witness this extraordinary sight will for that moment in time be granted clarity into their own hearts as well as the hearts of those around them.
When you’re ready to live your dream, allow Caribbean Soul Charters to show you the way.
Please remember to never look directly into the sun.
View a Green Flash observed on the western horizon from Madagascar as the eclipse ends.
