The sunset viewed from my neighborhood begins slowly, but ends quickly. At first an orange-yellow fills the sky. The color is vibrant, flooding into its onlooker's eyes instantaneously. New colors form on the faces of the few lone clouds as the sun continues to creep its way down to the edge of the horizon. Crimson, pink, burgundy, violet, and indigo all mixed in one beautiful show. As the sun touches the horizon, the area where the sun would have been at around five o'clock is a combined blue and white. Yet the sun sinks farther and farther below the vast landscape, and the sky becomes a huge rainbow, but with only three colors. First there is a line of gold staining just a small portion of the horizon. Just above that is a pale bluish-white portion a few times thicker than the golden strip. Just above that a dark baby blue fills the entire sky beyond reach of the sun.
Weird blue dot
This image (when viewed in full size, 1000 pixels ...
Voyager 1 entering heliosheath region CATAs the sun disappears within seconds, the horizon looks like God took a golden crayon and outlined the edge. Then the pale blue and baby blue that used to be separated look to have been darkened a shade and smeared perfectly with a big sponge. Seconds later, the light that once was is gone, and not too far away I know God is awing somebody else with the sun's magnificent rays.
Seen from 6 billion kilometres (3.7 billion miles)...
A diagram depicting Voyager 1 at its relative posi...
Pale Blue Dot unaltered