Quote:
Originally Posted by Pluto
Are you sure? I´ve been flying "real" planes sometimes, heading also right into the sun (heading west late afternoon) and I was not blinded to the extent that I could not see my instruments anymore, like now in Cliffs of Dover, that would have been fatal!
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That's why, the bold part. When the sun is low on the horizon, the light rays have a longer line to travel and pass through more of the atmosphere. This means more scattering due to the increased air mass they have to travel through, so they also lose more of their energy this way (lower energies are red colours, hence the sunset/sunrise effect) and that's why a rising/setting sun is not as blinding as a mid-day/noon sun.
Trust me, i might have flunked my physics studies but observational astronomy was the one field i was pretty good on because i liked it: i once read three different books on the sun alone and did a 40-page report, when the assignment asked for just 12 pages or so after taking some measurements with a telescope and filters
