Extremely rare 'green flash' coming from Venus captured by a lucky photographer

The green flash was captured by photographer Peter Rosén who pointed his camera at one of Earth's closest neighbors - Venus. The footage was snapped in the early hours on January 8 as Rosén was watching Venus rise above the horizon. So, what is this green flash, as shown above? Firstly, visible light contains many different wavelengths of colored light, and when this light shines through Earth's atmosphere, these individual wavelengths begin to be refracted through the molecules in Earth's atmosphere.

The green flash is light bouncing off Venus and making its way through Earth's atmosphere, specifically Earth's low atmosphere, where it travels through more of the atmosphere and eventually reaches the observer. As light passes through Earth's atmosphere, a prism effect takes place, as the light is split into RGB colors, which can also be affected by temperature. When this event is taking place, it's possible that only green wavelengths of light make it to the observer, with all other wavelengths either being scattered or absorbed by Earth's molecules.

"On Monday morning I woke up early to get a beautiful view of Venus and the Moon rising over Stockholm's skyline," says Rosén. "Because of the extreme cold that still persists over southern Sweden, I also got an unexpected bonus in the form of a rare green flash on Venus."

However, in the above footage, if you look closely, you will be able to see yellow, orange, red, and even blue. Another simple example of this is how Earth's atmosphere scatters blue wavelengths of light more than any other color, resulting in the sky appearing blue.

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