Have you ever heard of the "Green Flash"?

I'd heard about the 'green flash' from a few friends and from my wife who would say, everytime we watched a sunset over our fifty years of marriage, "Look for the green flash". We always looked but we never saw one. Not once did it appear for us.

The sun slips slowly downwards to a clear ocean horizon. Ever reddening as it sinks, soon only a thin sliver of the once hot disk is left. Then, as that too shrinks and lessens, it shines forth for just a second in a most vivid emerald green. Then it is gone, only the dark ocean remains. That is the green flash of fable.

And so it was again on October 27, 2012. We found ourselves in Half Moon Bay, California, late in the afternoon on a spectacular day. The air was crisp and cool but extremely clear. The fog was out there but hadn't started rolling in yet. We drove by our usual haunts looking for space for dinner but we started too late.

As we continued, heading south the sun was dropping fast and people were already parked on the side of the road waiting for the sunset and perhaps the 'green flash'.

We were running out of time fast as we approached the turnoff for the Miramar restaurant. The Miramar isn't one of our first choices but tonight as there seemed to be no space at the inns we stopped if for no other reason than to watch the sunset. There was enough cloud action to make it a good one.

Oddly enough it wasn't crowded so we parked the car but there wasn't time to go in as the sun was on it's way down and moving rather quickly. We parked ourselves on a bench overlooking the beach and the ocean. People were gathering hoping for a marvelous sunset.

As the sun got closer to the horizon I heard Diane whisper, "Look for the green flash". I smiled and said, "Yeah. Right", as I pulled out my camera and took off the lens cap getting ready for some great sunset photos.

As the sun dropped toward the horizon, I clicked a picture, waited a bit and clicked again. I took a series of nine photos of this sunset. As the shutter clicked on the seventh picture, I saw the green flash! At that moment I heard a man some distance yell, "Did you see the green flash? I saw the green flash! Diane said, "I missed it!"

There was no denying that a green flash happened. It made me, a for sure believer, but could I prove it. I snapped the picture just as I saw it but was I lucky enough to have time it just right. What were the chances of that?

We talked to several people about seeing the green flash and then went into the restaurant to celebrate with a drink. I got my camera out and looked at the photos but on my small camera screen, it looked as though I had missed it. No proof, darn.

A couple of days later I uploaded the several hundred photos I'd taken over the past couple of weeks from my camera to my computer. As I looked through the photos, I came to the sunset series. As I got to number seven, I saw that I had in fact captured the green flash. It was so small that it was difficult to see but it was definitely visible. I ran to show Diane. Talk about exciting. After all these years, we not only had seen the green flash but we had captured it.

It doesn't seem fair, though, that I saw the green flash and even caught it on film (digitally), that she missed it. After all those years in pursuit of the green flash she must continue to look. While it is now old hat for me she still has something to look forward to. Nice!

Following is that sunset series.

Above is the first photo -- Zoomed.