Air Date: Week of April 26, 2024

Mark Seth Lender captures the ‘Green Flash’ alongside Smeagull the Seagull. (Photo: © Mark Seth Lender)

On rare occasions a green “flash” can appear on the horizon at sunrise or sunset. Living on Earth’s Explorer-in-Residence Mark Seth Lender has been lucky enough to catch it more than once.

Transcript

O’NEILL: So Jenni – have you ever seen the elusive “green flash” at sunset or at sunrise?

DOERING: Oh, I’ve heard of that, but no, I’ve never seen it. You?

O’NEILL: Me neither. Add it to the bucket list, I guess? But Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender has been lucky enough to catch it more than once.

The Green Flash
© 2023 Mark Seth Lender
All Rights Reserved

By proclivity, which is to say, with no heroic efforts or even an alarm clock, I’m an early riser. Most mornings I make a coffee and take it to the porch, and sit, and meditate, facing the sea. Then I watch the sun come up. My days can be frantic, like everyone else. These mornings are something in reserve. If I remember—if I remind myself—I can return to that morning frame of mind and calm down. I’m privileged in this. Sometimes, exceptionally so. This morning for the first time in months and months the air was clean. The wildfire smoke that’s been with us, this sick nitric acid orange all across the horizon… it wasn’t there. And the light had this clarity. It looked much colder than it was. And it was just beautiful. I finished my meditation, and looked toward the glow where the sun would rise and waited. When the sun comes up, just as the first inkling of the disk breaks the horizon, sometimes, if everything is just right, there is an incredibly brief, incredibly bright flash of green. It can happen at sunset too but in reverse, just as the sun disappears. It’s rare. In either case.

For centuries, mariners and those who live close by the sea have claimed to see a brilliant flash of intense green light, at sunrise or sunset, always and only over water. Science was long in doubt. So was Explorer in Residence Mark Seth Lender until he captured one on film. (Photo: © Mark Seth Lender)

This morning before sunrise, the sky was unusual in some way I can’t quite describe. It was this quality that captured my attention. I had the feeling this was a sunrise not to miss. All those elements, clear and bright and not too cold. I kept my eyes on the horizon where the sun would soon be. It’s so fast when you see it you are never sure, certainly not the first time or the second time. But this morning I saw the Green Flash for only the third time in my entire life, always over water, and in this instance for the first time in 40 years.

O’NEILL: That’s Living on Earth’s Explorer in Residence, Mark Seth Lender.

Links

Mark Seth Lender’s Website

Slow-Motion Video of the Green Flash on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website