Green flashes at sunset over Paranal

This image of a sunset at Paranal shows the phenomenon of green flashes that can occur when the Sun slips downwards and the atmosphere can cause the solar light to separate out into different colours. On the right of the image, the sleepy Sun unusually shaped by refraction between air layers of different temperature is shown, while on the left 14 zoomed shots of the upper rim of the disk are listed, taken at a subsequent time at the very last moment of the sunset. They keep track of the special moment when the atmospheric conditions caused the Sun profile to be cut in two parts: one with the thin slice of the usual sunlight, the other one coloured from yellow to vivid green during the fading out phases.

All the pictures were taken from a window of La Residencia, hotel of the ESO Very Large Telescope.