Sunset stages, the story

Sunsets proceed in stages. Maybe you know about that. I didn't discover it until I was in like the 40th grade (I am in the 60th now), which surprises me a little. I have looked closely at quite a few sunsets in my time, starting with the gorgeous West Texas sunsets when I was a kid in Abilene.

But it was a long time before I noticed the stages. You have to reach a point in your life where you are willing to hang around for the whole thing. Mostly, people will take a minute to look at a spectacular sunset, then go do something else. To see the stages, you have to give it a half-hour, or at least 20 minutes. When it happened to me, I was watching a sunset and saw the shimmering, bright‑gold veil of light pass through its moment of peak radiancy, then fade as usual to something grayer. Several minutes later, I thought I saw the luminosity increasing once more. It did increase, and peak, and fade to something grayer still. I waited and watched. The luminosity returned a third time.

"Hey," I said. Since that night I have watched for the stages. The most I have ever seen is six. They are easiest to see when clouds are present. The sunset last night was perfect for stage‑watching. We had clouds coming off the ocean yesterday in advance of what the weathermen are advertising as a good series of storms coming down to us from Alaska. Karen saw it first and went out and took these photos. In the first, you are looking at the tip of Point Loma jutting into the Pacific. The second shows the silhouette of shorefront condos in Coronado and the ocean beyond.

BLOGGER: PUT PHOTOS 1 AND 2 HERE (SEE PREVIOUS POST)

But the show, of course, is in the sky. This is the second or third stage of a sunset, still in the gray and gold registers. On the clock it was about 5 p.m. Then Karen had to leave for a meeting. I was in the back of the house. Five minutes after she left, I came to the front, looked out the windows, and ran for the camera.

BLOGGER: PUT PHOTOS 3 AND 4 HERE

I got the fifth and sixth stages. The stages arrive in luminosity waves. The light changes in color and intensity each time but there is always an increase, a peak and a fade. The colors go from bright gold to gold‑trimmed peach to rose to dusky rose to the very lowest register of red to charcoal to pearl. It seems as if the clouds might simply be swapping colors with the sky behind them. When the sky was peach, the clouds were rose. When the sky turned rose, the clouds became peach. As the sky moved from pearl to charcoal, the clouds moved from charcoal to pearl.

But I'm not sure. It would need more study. I have thought occasionally to make a more formal study of these sunset stages, but then the sunset arrives and I forget about it. I would not be a good one to record notes during a sunset. Someone, however, should. Possibly someone already has. As an issue of physics, the stages of sunsets must be a fairly interesting matter of angles, declinations and refractions, the purely mathematical interplay of sunlight with Earth boundaries. Maybe someone out there knows exactly how many stages there are, and of what duration, and how far apart.

I watched a little longer, then took one last photo.

BLOGGER: PUT PHOTO 5 HERE.

I didn't know if there would be enough light, and I don't have photographer skills to go adjusting apertures for this sort of thing. But the shutter gave a sharp "click," so I figured I had it. It wasn't another 10 seconds before this sunset's final fade began. I like it that sunsets have stages. It makes them like a rainbow for the day, acknowledging a present beautiful moment and promising more to come.