Thanks to . . .

George Kattawar, for getting me into the sunset business.

Pekka Parviainen, for providing copies of his sunset pictures, and for many useful discussions of sunsets and sunset photography.

William Beasley, for providing a sympathetic ear, and for suggesting the compilation of an annotated bibliography on green flashes.

Lu Rarogiewicz, Kelly Cummings, Michael-Leonard Creditor, Mike Bandfield, Hank Hogan, Kenneth Langford, and Arthur Missira for letting me make use of their sunset and green-flash photographs.

The Inter-Library Loan people at San Diego State University, for obtaining photocopies of the great majority of the references I've used.

The reference librarians at SDSU, for pointing out valuable indexes I never knew existed, such as the Royal Society's Catalogue.

Caleb Taylor, for useful discussions of his father's work on green flashes, and for permission to use copies of the illustration from the Taylor-Matthias paper.

Brigitte Hofmann, for digging through the files of Kosmos and finding several items I hadn't known existed — as well as for providing photocopies!

Mart de Groot, for help in translating some of Havinga's antiquated Dutch.

Barbara Welther, for references related to Willard Fisher.

Brenda Corbin, for GF references in the USNO files; for copies of references unavailable elsewhere; and for her exceedingly kind efforts to help this work.

Dorrit Hoffleit, for telling me about her experiences with Willard Fisher.

Craig Bohren, for a copy of Weatherwise that contains his GF article.

Yvain Treve, for references to the work of his great-uncle.

Prof. J. C. Yardley of the University of Ottawa for finding the mirage passage in the works of Quintus Curtius.

Ernst Raimond for a copy of Kater's paper.

Dean Newman put me onto the couplet "Glimpse you e'er the green ray, count the morrow a fine day," which he remembers one character in a novel reciting to another at the rail of a ship — but he cannot recall where.

Orell Witthuber for pointing out Andersson's review of Groff's work.

Luca Lombroso for information about Carlo Bonacini's publication.

G. P. Können for information about B. G. Escher, as well as the GF pages from the first (1910) edition of Pernter & Exner, and other references.

Gerhard Czeplak for photocopies of Gustav Schröder's papers, and other works in Ann. Hydrog.

Roswell Austin for an actual reprint of the Taylor-Matthias paper!

Stephen Williams for help with references, and for finding the mention of green flashes in Beyond Stonehenge.

Axel Quetz for providing the page reference to Rossnagel's paper.

Siebren van der Werf for providing the Fuchs-Hillary quotation and reference, as well as “ABC der Optik”.

Robert Roosen for pointing out David Poyer's interesting book.

Marjory G. Roy for the reference to Watts's obituary of Omond.

Michael Vollmer, for several recent German references and reprints.

Claudia Hetze, for numerous recent German references.

Keith Heidorn, "the Weather Doctor," for mentioning Lee's "Weather Wisdom." (Another book of the same name led me to Humphreys's 1923 book.)

Yvonne Hill, editor of "The Ensign" (U.S. Power Squadrons), for providing copies of Charles B. Minnich's "Ancient Navigator" columns.

Prof. James Smith, of the SDSU Classics Department, for help in translating Roger Boscovich's mirage observations.

Prof. C. de Jager, for providing copies of numerous papers published in De Zee.

Mr. B. de Nijs, for making those papers available to Prof. de Jager (and so, indirectly, to me).

Agnes McLean, for locating the James Anthony Froude reference (1877), thanks to her skill with CARL Uncover.

Albert Jansen, for pointing out Visser's paper in H&D 55, 74 (1957).

The editors of Nuovo Orione for providing a copy of their issue with Paolo Candy's GF pictures.

W. H. Lehn, for reminders to look up some old mirage papers.

Annette Moncur and Finlay Macdonald, editor of the Auckland, New Zealand Listener, for a copy of their Dec. 18, 1999, issue that contains a green-flash article; and Michael Curtis, for pointing out that reference.

John Norris for mentioning the 1967 Lovell-Margerison book in a Usenet posting.

Kari Olila, for several green-flash URLs, including the photographs taken by Jack Stephens.

Andrew Alden, for finding the source of the line, “the sun ... slid into the sea, and went out like a blue spark.” He also provided some useful observational details for his own GF observation.

Alan Gilmore, for information about Scottish novelist William Black.

David Burch, for discovering the Starokadomskiy reference.

Christine Francescani, for pointing out Randy Wayne White's use of the green flash in his novel The Heat Islands.

Brenda Corbin again, for providing a copy of Biot's figures from the 1839 Connaissance des Tems, which the ILL people couldn't come up with in four tries!

Thanks to Philippe Demard, who photographed the green-flash sequence for Eric Rohmer's film, for much useful information about his photography.

Thanks to Shaun Hardy, Librarian at the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism, for supplying many references on refraction and green flashes that I had not been able to discover.

Ray Emery, the President of the Leeds Astronomical Society in 2000, very kindly provided over a dozen GF items by Charles T. Whitmell from old issues of their Journal & Transactions. Among them was a lengthy obituary of Mr. Whtmell, written by H. P. Hollis, another Leeds GF observer.

Dr. Rolf-Dieter Auer, for providing information on a couple of German books I was unable to get hold of.

Prof. Dr. Kristian Schlegel, for sending a copy of his book, besides the earlier photocopies of its GF pages; and, in addition, for supplying copies of some references I needed.

B. (Dieneke) de Vries, for much biographical information about Prof. M. E. Mulder.

Takayuki Kono, both for pointing out Japanese GF pages and translating their text, and for finding some Japanese GF publications and providing translations as well.

Françoise Launay, for information about Jules Janssen and his connection to Jules Verne.

Charles Freehling, for pointing out the “emerald drop” in Jean Rhys's novel “Wide Sargasso Sea”.

Gordon Richardson, for pointing out some broken links, and for feedback on the Web pages.

Hezi Yizhaq, for pointing out Jules Verne's first reference to a sunrise flash, in Chapter XVII of “Les Indes Noires”.

Alison Ford, for pointing out the GF passage in Laurens van der Post's novel “The Face Beside the Fire.”

Brenda Corbin of USNO, Howard J. Cohen of NIMA, and Albert E. “Skip” Theberge, Jr., of NOAA, for cooperating in a search for Willis Edwin Hurd's elusive “Pilot Chart” article on “Refraction and Mirage”. Hearty thanks, folks, for your success in finding and scanning this hard-to-find and awkward item!

Eric Frappa, for providing the correct «Semestre» of a Tissandier reference, and particularly for telling me about Alphonse Berget's book, illustrated by Rudaux.

Leo Molenaar, for sending a copy of his Minnaert brochure.

Luc Dettwiller, for numerous French references.

Owen Gingerich, for help deciphering Latin abbreviations.

The Friends of the Library at SDSU, for providing me a copy of O'Connell's book! What can I say? You are too kind!

Wim van Bochoven, for allowing me to use his mirage pictures; and Olaf Squarra, for getting us together.

Luca Lombroso again, for a copy of the part of Malvasia's Ephemerides dealing with Cassini's refraction tables.

the maintainers of the Wayback Machine, for making it possible to fix some broken links.

Greg Smart, for the pointer to William Galvani's article on the “48 Degrees North” website.

George Golitsyn, for pointing out his papers on refraction.

Gerardo E. Milesi, for providing enough bibliographic detail for me to obtain some long-missing references.

Wayne A. Walker, for pointing out some gaps in my coverage of green-flash phenomena; I've now modified several pages to remedy the omissions.

Sharron Huling, for providing photocopies of some hard-to-get references.

Craig Fraser, via Jed Buchwald and Richard F. Lyon, for trying to find the reference to Legendre's introduction of the term “semi-convergent”; and to Giovanni Ferraro for turning it up ap last, through their efforts.

John Gilchrist Lang of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, for telling me about his great-great-grandfather, Andrew Lang.

Andrew Wanowski, for catching my mis-reading of Mulder (as well as reporting a green ray like Mulder's).

Eric Hutton has identified several pen-names from the “English Mechanic” and is compiling more. Those in my bibliography are F.R.A.S. (Captain Noble); “Glatton” (Clement Stretton); and “Sigma” (Mr. Sprague).

Steven M. van Roode pointed out Leo Molenaar's 2003 biography of Minnaert.

Andy Beeler pointed out the 2005 South Pole green flashes to me.

Eric Frappa again, for pointing out George Alcock's green-ray reports.

Guy Hurst, for supplying a copy of Alcock's original report.

Anna M. Stevens, for finding Mary Wickham Bond's 1971 book.

Jacques Crovisier, for the 2005 Jules Verne item.

Jim Mosher, for explaining who Samuel Dunn was, and for pointing out various references I'd missed.

Charles Campbell, for pointing out Ellison Hawks's book.

Ernie Lewis, for providing a copy of the paper by Bönsch and Potulski.

Dr. Jason Lucas, of Cambridge University, for providing the details on the English translation of Bilberg's book that allowed me to see a microfilm of it.

Maria Toscano, for help with Giovene's references.

Alan Robock, for permission to use his mirage photographs from Antarctica.

Jason C. Carter, for his fine example of artifacts due to digital processing.

Aleksandar T. Lovcanski, for asking useful questions about mirages.

Robert P. O'Shea, for many useful suggestions about the presentation of mirage simulations.

Richard Feldman, for correcting an algebraic error on one of my pages.

Dr. Mike Maffett, for the use of his green-ghost artifact.

Cleveland A. Winge, Jr., for pointing out Mike Marinkovich's green-ray observation.

Tom Gilman, for correcting my link to his crepuscular-ray page.

Walter Nissen, for many useful discussions of green flashes, and for finding several errors on my Web pages.

Rosanne Walker, the former librarian at the Adolph Basser Library of the Australian Academy of Science, for checking on the proceedings of the Pan Indian Ocean science conference in 1951 at the National Library of Australia to see whether the green-flash paper given at the conference by A. D. Ross might be there. (Alas, the scientific papers read at the conference were not published in the proceedings.) But at least, I can now cross that possibility off my list.

Stephen Mccluskey, for pointing out the availability of the Argelander-Bessel refraction data near the horizon, on the Web.

Edward Gilbert, for making his research on Charles Mostyn available to me.

Walter Nissen, for getting Google Books to include Mulder's book — and for passing the URLs on to me.

Ken Stone, for citing Ditchburn's article in the New Scientist. (I learned optics from Ditchburn's textbook, "Light".)

Thierry Lombry, for telling me that Feenstra Kuiper's thesis is available at the Utrecht University library.

Gregor Milla, for finding a couple of items on my "wanted" list.

Denis Khotimsky, for a copy of Tikhov's 1913 green-flash paper, and some interesting discussion of the mysterious "W. Cornelis" who named the Novaya-Zemlya phenomenon.


Suggestions for improvements to these pages are welcome. What's the best thing here? What's the worst? Find some mistakes? Please let me know.

© 1999 – 2010, 2012 – 2017, 2020 Andrew T. Young

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