Sunsets | Ballybunion | Ballybunion By The Sea

In Ballybunion by the sea, the sun gives a fiery kiss goodnight. It is near impossible to watch it and not dream.

All year round in Ballybunion, Mother Nature parades her sun’s rays, letting them bend and wind across the Atlantic Ocean and sky, sending us a display of colours from soft pinks and yellow to bright orange and flaming red. The light bounces off the caves and cliffs, it glistens and sparkles over the ripples in the Atlantic.

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The sight of Ballybunion’s red sun sinking between Kerry Head and Loop Head, is mesmerizing and will leave you with a profound sense of awe, as well as some seriously impressive photographs.

Heliological Hearsay

Sunsets happen because of the Earth's atmosphere.

If the Earth was airless, let’s say, like the moon, then the sun would look the same as it was dropping behind the horizon. However, due to our 300 mile atmosphere, we get the scattered effect of light as the atmosphere acts as a prism.

The sun starts to lose colour as it sets.

As the sun starts dropping to the horizon, it starts to lose its blue wavelength hues, then its green and yellow hues, and eventually orange, leaving only red wavelengths. That is why, the sun, at the end of a sunset, will look like a ball of fire.

By the time you see the sun set, it's actually gone.

Have you ever been told that some of the stars you are looking at are already dead because of the time it takes the light to travel? Well the same kind of thing happens with the sun, except the sun doesn’t die every night. Again thanks to our atmosphere, which bends light, we are able to see the sun setting, even after it has actually dipped below the horizon.

"Red sky at night, shepherd's delight; red sky in morning, shepherd's take warning." This quote is actually true.

The bright, red, pure colors at night mean that the air is clear to the west and will be good weather in the morning. A red sky in the morning means that good, high pressure weather has already passed meaning low pressure weather (storms) will be coming to the east.