Twilight is the time between dawn and sunrise or between sunset and dusk, during which sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere illuminates the lower atmosphere, and the surface of the earth is neither completely lit nor completely dark. The sun itself is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Owing to the distinctive quality of the ambient light at this time, twilight has long been popular with photographers, who refer to it as Sweet Light, and painters, who refer to it as the "blue hour", after the French expression l'heure bleue.
The collateral adjective for twilight is crepuscular; it is most frequently encountered when applied to certain insects, fishes, and mammals that are most active during that time.
Read more about Twilight: Definitions, Length, On Other Planets, In Hinduism, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the word twilight:
“There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
The traveler hastens toward the town,
And the tide rises, the tide falls.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1809–1882)
“But we still remember ... above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and crude,—the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New English too, brought hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)