Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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from there on. That's what I was prepared to see, I guess, but this wasn't the way it was at all. The sun goes down and its a brilliant display. There's all the spectrum lined up here almost. Just as the sun goes down--well before the sun goes down you have a broad band ... down in the atmosphere that we show on the pictures that I took too and I'm sorry we don't have those there to brief you with those but you'll see those later where starting with the sun down on the horizon there's a great band that runs way out here maybe I think I estimated some 45 to 60 degrees on each side of the sun, way out. And it gradually gets down to a point out here like that. Starting from a very bright white band close to the earth and going out to a point out here and the other bands of light going from, oh, yellowish and orange color on up into the blues as you get off toward the black of space. Just as the sun sets that last little sliver of light where I was looking for the green flash that everyone has been looking for, that I had been briefed on, just as I'm watching for that, just as the sun gets down on the horizon, why it joins this long sliver. So you don't actually see that last little sliver of sun. It goes down, you can tell when it goes down but it's not a clear ball just going below the horizon like that. It's out in this broad sliver that goes out toward the horizon.

This bend is primarily a horizon phenomena. It doesn't run perpendicular to the horizon.

No. It's in the atmosphere. Very definitely.

It shows it quite well on that photograph there.

The zodiacal light I looked for and I never was night adapted enough to see it.

Solar Corona?