Twilight is the time between dawn and sunrise or between sunset and dusk, during which sunlight scattering in the upper atmosphere illuminates the lower atmosphere, and the surface of the earth is neither completely lit nor completely dark. The sun itself is not directly visible because it is below the horizon. Owing to the distinctive quality of the ambient light at this time, twilight has long been popular with photographers, who refer to it as Sweet Light, and painters, who refer to it as the "blue hour", after the French expression l'heure bleue.
The collateral adjective for twilight is crepuscular; it is most frequently encountered when applied to certain insects, fishes, and mammals that are most active during that time.
Read more about Twilight: Definitions, Length, On Other Planets, In Hinduism, Gallery
Famous quotes containing the word twilight:
“Love that had robbed us of immortal things,
This little moment mercifully gave,
Where I have seen across the twilight wave
The swan sail with her young beneath her wings.”
—George Meredith (1828–1909)
“The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“But we still remember ... above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and crude,—the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New English too, brought hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)