Setting Sun through a peep hole

 

Setting Sun through a peep hole

This evening as the Sun was setting, I was witness to a wonderful sight: The setting of the Sun through a peephole. Yes, I was a voyeur, not of the everyday variety.

This was a special show for one, me. It was available to many but not many would have availed it and no one would have enjoyed it. The enjoyment I derived was of a special kind.

Yesterday, in the mostly cloud covered western sky I saw a bright spot, not more than about one twenty fifths of the apparent diameter of the Sun as we see from the earth (a little more than one arc minute).

The spot was pure orange. There were the usual streaks of orange peeking out from the edges of the clouds that many photographers have captured. But, this one was different: a singular, tiny, bright, unsullied orange spot. It was as pure as pure can be in the midst of splashes of color in the sky. I wanted to rush down to my apartment, get my camera and photograph what I saw. But, sanity prevailed and I merely enjoyed the beauty that lasted perhaps for two minutes. I wanted no one else to partake in this spectacle.

Spectacle, you say, you are asking. My answer: YES!

The probability of the rays’ of the Sun filtering through a minute hole (made by the edges of adjoining clouds) and the Sun filling it with its effulgent rays, and this is the icing on the cake of probability, to hit the retina of an observer who realizes what he is seeing is equal to the various parts of an airplane upon crashing assembling itself to the before-the-crash configuration, all on their own. The peephole was made in the atmosphere of the earth. What I saw, then, is a near-earth spectacle (though the Sun is far from the earth), infinite times more than that of a Solar or Lunar eclipse that people go Whoa! over!

I enjoyed this ephemeral beauty which is nigh impossible to be repeated. I am writing this only to put it on record (without a photograph) for the brief time this space will survive.

For students of high school, the Sun offered this indelible opportunity, available only to the initiated, on reckoning probability.

Probability and beauty together. Alas, no teacher would be interested and no student could be made to be interested. They say, just a bright spot in the sky.

Pity.

Raghuram Ekambaram