Red Sunset in an Orange Sky
Topping off a rather destructive hurricane season, Hurricane Ophelia, at its height a category 3 hurricane, made a beeline for Ireland.
Upon making landfall on October 16, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm, but still brought with it huge winds and rain to Ireland, Wales and Scotland. Moreover, it brought some other side effects as well.
On 16 October, large parts of the UK had escaped the storm but got treated to an eerie orange sky with a faint reddish Sun. This was caused by warm air filled with Saharan sand mixed with smoke from wild fires on the Iberian peninsula, which got pulled along by the storm.
Here in the Netherlands, we got unseasonably warm and clear weather that dayinstead, thanks to the same storm, with temperatures up to 25 degrees which is unheard of at this time of year. However, by the next day, 17 October, the spooky skies had reached us as well, casting an eerie light all day, albeit slightly less severe.
Near sunset, when I got home from work, I managed to get a window of a few minutes to get a few shots of the Sun before it disappeared. I did not have time to set up my full telescope, so I took the pic with my Samsung Galaxy S7 at 2x zoom through my 10x50 binoculars, giving a total magnification of roughly 20x. At this point the orange skies were already fading a bit compared to earlier in the day, but I still managed to get some redness in the Sun.