Spring warming reduces the number of geometric phases


Early April 28 2001, the sun really never set for the first time. But it rose from a very persistent and long "fire on the ice"stage. The sun upper limb was about .8 degrees below the horizon at its lowest point (contrast this to the staggering 2 degrees boosts of March). Observation location was on a hill, the view was the North with hills on the horizon. A modern GPS, as on pictures, miscalculated totally the fact that the sun never set the day before. Unfortunately the sunset of the 27th was masked by clouds. The sunrise contrasted quite a lot with the sunset a few days before. The temperature of the atmosphere warmed up considerably. Likewise the rectangular aspects of this sunrise are not as apparent as with April 23 sunset.

To the right are three rows of digital pictures. First one was taken by digital camera, 2nd row was with the same camera however two sunglass plastic Polaroid sheets were placed over its lens perpendicularly, allowing no visual light to go through, images on the second row are most likely Infrared. The third row has a juxtaposition of the visual and Infrared shots. It is quite remarkable to note that the height of the Infrared sun is much greater than the height of the visual sun especially with the low horizon shots. A calibration test of the Polaroid sheet arrangement was done with ordinary light bulb and no such effect was noticed.

The warmer atmosphere dramatically reduced refraction boosts and likewise geometric phases as a result of EH2r. The Rectangular sun virtually disappeared in a matter of a few days. What was recognizable, was the flat bottom phase, Phase 2. "Fire on the Ice" was definitely not as red as in March. But this sunrise has characteristics closer in resemblance to most seen further South.

All pictures and Infrared concept by Gunther Kletetschka.