"Ever gazed upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?"

"Ever gazed upon the green flash, Master Gibbs?"
"I reckon I've seen my fair share. Happens on rare occasion; the last glimpse of sunset, a green flash shoots up into the sky. Some go their whole lives without ever seeing it. Some claim to have seen it who ain't. And some say—"
"It signals when a soul comes back to this world, from the dead!"

http://pirates.wikia.com/wiki/Green_flash

The Green Flash is a myth right? I mean it wasn't in the movie Pirates of the Caribbean but that's because It's a movie!

"Green Flash is a small green color that occasionally appears on the upper part of the sun as is rises or sets."

      - It's true! It even says so in my Meteorology Today text book! (Meteorology Today, David Ahrens, 2006)

Basically, the "Green Flash" is just an optical phenomenon that happens some times at sunrise or sunset, but most commonly at sunset. It is deemed as a "Flash" because it only happens for a couple of seconds. The Green Flash tends to happen in the moderate latitudes, meaning the latitudes closer to the equator, and they aren't really as big as the one that is shown from the POTC movie.

http://www.icstars.com/Mad/Astro/GreenFlash.html
A true Green Flash. Location is in Madagascar.

 

The reasoning behind the Green Flash:

The sunlight refracts through the atmosphere all of the time, its like a giant prism. At certain times of the day (sunrise and sunset), the sunlight refracts through the atmosphere and turns brilliant colors. This is due to the prism effect being at its greatest, aka, the light is traveling the farthest through the atmosphere. Sometimes we experience red, pink, purple and even orange sunrises and sunsets because of this effect.

The same reasoning goes behind the Green Flash. When the sky is pretty clear and right as the sun has cleared the horizon or just before, the prism effect is at its greatest. The other colors like yellow, orange, blue, and purple, get absorbed and scattered by particles through the atmosphere. The red and green don't. The green creeps just over the red and you can see the separation between the two, causing the green "flash." Green is visible at the top because it can refract father then red.

(Refraction/Refract simply means bends.)

History Behind the Flash

The first recognition of the Green Flash was in 1882, in a novel titled "Le Rayon Vert" by Jules Verne's.

"a green which no artist could ever obtain on his palette, a green of which neither the varied tints of vegetation nor the shades of the most limpid sea could ever produce the like! If there is a green in Paradise, it cannot be but of this shade, which most surely is the true green of Hope"

From then on the rest is history!

 Of Course there is folklore with this!

Sailing folklore says, seeing a green flash is a sign of impending good weather.

                                 "Glimpse you ere the green ray,
                                   Count the morrow a fine day." 

Of course in some of the "Pirate" folklore, "It signals when a soul comes back to this world, from the dead!"

In some fiction tales it is also said that, the person that sees the flash, will never again err in the matters of the heart. (From the same novel as above.)

Just another one of those amazing optical phenomenon that are rare but I would love to experience some day!

PS- I thought it would be appropriate to write a blog on something Green, seeing as it's St. Patrick's Day.  AND I had a couple relatives asking if it were true :)