Many people will be hoping for cloudless skies in the Peak District over the next three nights, so that they get a chance to see a double sunset.
Peekaboo is one of the earliest games that babies learn to play, passing from fear to delight as they realise that mummy is still there, even when she appears to have disappeared, and, better still, that they can play the same trick on others too.
To witness the sun playing a game of peekaboo with you requires a place to stand, with line-of-sight to a very particular configuration of a hill. I will not attempt to set down the trigonometrical or astronomical explanations for this in words – there is a very helpful description in ‘Dr Plot’
This phenomenon may awaken the tiniest smidgen of sympathy with those who feel that explanation removes the magic. Except that it does not, of course. We can still feel a shiver. imagining what it must have been like to witness this event in prehistoric times, and on into the time that man continued to believe, on the evidence of his own eyes, that he stood at the centre of a still universe around which it was the sun that revolved.
We can still marvel, experience awe & a tiny frisson of fear if we think about the implications of all those forces which keep us spinning in our place.
Picture:A woodcut illustrating the double sunset from the 'Gentleman's Magazine', in July 1738
Links
Related post
