Celestia Forums

John Glenn wrote:Up in space when you see a sunset or sunrise, the light is coming to you from the sun through that little shell of the Earth?€™s atmosphere and back out to the spacecraft you?€™re in. The atmosphere acts like a prism. So for a short period of time you see not only the reds, oranges and yellows, the luminous quality like you see on Earth, but you see the whole spectrum red-orange-yellow-blue-green-indigo-violet.

Is this correct?

Will this effect be in a future version of Celestia?

I remember seeing a photo back when the space program was going. It showed the sun setting from space just a you describe and yes there was a prism effect. Now I would venture to guess that this does not happen every time because the refraction of the light is caused by water vapor so the effect would be more pronounced with higher amounts of water in the air at the time the sun is shining. Kind of like what we see today on earth.

Don