Twilight
When the sun has just set the brightness of the sky decreases rapidly thereby enabling us to see the airglow that is caused from such high altitudes that they are still fully sunlit until the sun drops more than about 12° below the horizon. During this time, yellow emissions from the sodium layer and red emissions from the 630 nm oxygen lines are dominant, and contributes to the purple-ish color sometimes seen during civil and nautical twilight.
After the sun has also set for these altitudes at the end of nautical twilight, the intensity of light emanating from earlier mentioned lines decreases, until the oxygen-green remains as the dominant source.
When astronomical darkness has set in the green 557.7 nm oxygen line is dominant, and atmospheric scattering of starlight occurs
Read more about this topic: Sky Brightness
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)
“but now it is the rain
Possesses us entirely, the twilight and the rain.”
—Alun Lewis (1915–1944)
“You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)