First Impressions     

 

   I have been observing the commonly seen sunset. The only inconvenience(what I thought at first) was the sun's rays of colorful sunshine were being blocked out by the lingering haze of smoke.



9/15/17 Photo taken by Aaron Mastin 

 

In this picture the sunlight was diluted by a thick layer of smoke that left a bitter taste on my tongue. With the blood orange sun was struggling to pierce through the walls of the impenetrable smoke, the smoke was doing something that makes rare a understatement.   "Air pollution and smoke suppress rainfall, but cause the remaining rain amounts to fall in greater intensities" according to a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. What happens is that the smoke particles push apart the water drops into smaller, lighter ones. When this happens the water droplets become so light that they stay suspended up in the cloud for longer periods of time. This then causes a heightened intensity of rain fall when they finally become to heavy for the air. A whole bunch of smaller groups of droplets all falling faster than normal for a short amount of time. This combined with the rain clouds above caused a downpour for fifteen minutes that drenched everything around on 9/16/14.

   The sunset wasn't always all dark, gloomy and hidden by the smoke but, was also shining with all it's might, lighting up the valley I call the biggest little city in the world, Home. "The clouds were rolling in wave after wave like a army marching through the streets. There ranks seemed limitless, if you looked up you could see the clouds a solid row stretching from horizon to horizon making up the front line. With the sun setting in its center as a general would sitting back behind his glorious army." - 9/23/14 Field notes.

9/23/14 Photo taken by Aaron Mastin

   The twenty third of September was the first day I had observed the sun without the obscurity of the smoke blocking it out. Since this day the sunset has been a very enjoyable normal. It has been a baby blue sky with thick white clouds that hovered above the horizon. The sun making its normal streamline across the sky as it comes to its daily end of warmth to the west. It struggled to show its powerful rays of light as it feel behind the brown walls of the mountains that surround our valley to the west.  

   One thing I've been wondering is why does the suns rays change colors during the sunset? Also why does the sky turn blue while the suns up when the limitless distance of space up there is a dark black?