This Incredibly Beautiful Blue Phenomenon in Lapland – Do You Know What It Is?

During midwinter fell hikes in Lapland, when the weather is clear, you might see intense and beautiful colors on the opposite side of the landscape from the setting Sun. The upper one, a cool-toned redness, is called ‘Belt of Venus’ or ‘antitwilight’ – that is, the afterglow rising opposite the sunset. Beneath it, under certain conditions, an unrealistically beautiful blueness can be distinguished. This is the shadow of our own home planet.

To see the Earth’s shadow, you don’t have to be in fells of Lapland. Walking around my home villages in southwestern Finland near the Archipelago Sea, I’ve often seen it. However, seeing the shadow is aided by the purest possible air, which Lapland air is famously known for, and the fact that you can witness the sight from a slightly elevated position than the plains, to properly see it.

When the shadow is visible, the Sun’s light still reaches to redden the upper atmosphere, but the lower atmosphere has already fallen behind our curved home planet into a blue shadow. As the Sun truly sets, both the opposite afterglow and the Earth’s shadow rise higher and begin to fade, until they eventually disappear from view, as the twilight completely captures the landscape and sky for itself.

I had groundbreaking realizations reading about this in an article from Savon Sanomat (only in Finnish). By then, I had often seen the Earth’s shadow, but hadn’t known what I was really looking at. In recent years, I’ve thought a lot about space and our planet as a part of it, as well as us as inhabitants of space. Watching the sunrise or sunset, I love to focus on the thought that it’s not the Sun that’s moving, but us, our planet, spinning and racing through space. The awareness of the Earth’s shadow was one unrealistically beautiful additional aspect to this, a new way to see how we actually travel in space.

The blueness of the shadow is not at all like the blue of the sky or even the blue of the evening’s blue hour. It’s somehow much deeper and more velvety, and the opposite afterglow emphasizes its power and enchantment. The purer the air in the lower atmosphere, the bluer and clearer the Earth’s shadow appears.

Clouds partially or completely swallow the Earth’s shadow from view. However, on a clear day, it is an incredibly astonishing sight. In the picture below, we are looking at the landscape from Särkitunturi fell towards Pallastunturi fells at midday in Muonio, Lapland.

This post is also available in: German