Sciences Participating with Arts & Culture in Education

The Twilight of the Ignorance on Twilight

Two black silhouettes are standing face to face, enveloped by a yellow cloud of light that catches the edges of their bodies. The pair is waiting at a bus terminal and the once dismally grey concrete floor now seems to be melting into a slippery honey coated lake.

After stepping out of the monochromatic metro tunnels onto the bus terminal in Laval, something struck me. Perhaps I was feeling a bit Romantic that day, something like Friedrich’s Wanderer  (1818),  or perhaps I momentarily forgot that I am not a professional photographer (#Instagram), or maybe I was just inquisitive, but for the first time I truly appreciated something that has been right before me all my life: the twilight.

No, I am not alluding to the vampire ‘novels’ written by the ever so avant-garde Stephanie Meyer, but the astronomical phenomenon. Twilight is the period between total darkness and sunrise or between sunset and total darkness. Just because the sun sinks below the horizon does not mean that we cannot see anything; there is an interim period in which there is no visible sun, but we can still dimly see what is around us.

I took some pictures of the bus terminal that day and the result was the triad above. There is something almost paradoxical that I admire about twilight; there is seeing without the sun and brightness without direct light, yet there is darkness without the absence of sight and shadows with visible backgrounds. This collision between light and dark has never seemed so impossible and magnificent.

According to the US Astronomical Applications Department, twilight occurs because the sunlight that strikes the upper atmosphere is scattered by air, smoke and dust and partly reflected down back to the Earth’s surface. There are three distinct periods of twilight – civil twilight, nautical twilight and astronomical twilight – during which the sun moves from being 6° below the horizon, when it begins to be “necessary to use artificial light to carry out most activities”, to being 18° below the horizon, when it is dark enough so that “even the faintest stars overhead can be seen”.

The effect is quite spectacular, and has been often depicted in art and described in literature. For example, the French Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, painted twilight in Dusk in Venice (c. 1910) as well as in many of his haystack paintings. A whole art movement in late 19th century America, called luminism, also depicted twilight like no other movement before it. Barbara Novak’s American Painting of the Nineteenth Century characterizes luminism as depicting “serene landscapes … [with] exquisitely  subtle tonal modulations of golds, browns and grays” (71). The stunning works of Frederic E. Church (1826-1900) and Albert Bierstadt (1830) stand out among the many luminists (whose notable works can be viewed here: <http://www.artlex.com/ArtLex/kl/luminism.html>)

Besides some 19th - early 20th centuries painters and I, there are 2 billion others who also appreciate the splendour and sanctity of twilight. In Islām, the period of twilight dictates the undertaking of two important rituals. One of the Five Pillars of Islam, Salāt (prayer), is practised five times every day. The first of these prayers, Fajr, takes place during the morning twilight, from daybreak until sunrise. Twilight is also significant for Muslims in terms of the pillar of Sawm (fasting), which takes place during the holy month of Ramadan. Iftār, the meal that ends the entire day’s fasting, when one is considerably hungry and thirsty, is eaten during the evening twilight. Seeing as two of these significant rituals take place during the particular astronomical event of twilight, there seems to be something Allāh knows that we do not!

You also might have heard the term ‘twilight’ employed in other connotations. For example, when something is approaching or in its ‘twilight,’ it is said to be nearing its end or destruction (note: the title of this article). This is most probably a reference to the fact that the evening twilight marks the near end of the day, before the ‘destruction’ of night. Finally, the expression of a ‘twilight zone’, referring to “an area just beyond ordinary legal and ethical limits, [or] a world of fantasy or illusion” (Merriam-Webster), was popularized thanks to a television anthology series from the 1960s called The Twilight Zone.

If you want to get technical about referring to twilight, an animal or insect that is active primarily during this occurrence is said to be crepuscular. A further distinction can be made in terms of whether a creature is active during the morning’s pre-dawn twilight, in which it is matutinal, or whether it is active during the evening’s twilight, in which it is vespertine.

Although this is perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about that odd period of the day you might have noticed once on your way home, I feel like there is something we can all appreciate about twilight. Whether it is scientific, aesthetic, artistic, religious or metaphorical, twilight is, in my opinion, the most overlooked natural phenomenon on the planet. Take a little time to enjoy the view.