January sunsets on the Maine coast can be spectacular and their afterglows surprisingly different, as you see below.
That’s the sun “going down” behind Deer Isle. In the foreground. You can just make out Great Cove and various islands in Eggemoggin Reach, a windy channel that basically runs between Penobscot Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.
As you may know, that nice starburst effect is not a natural phenomenon; sunlight does not get emitted like that. Photographers will tell you that the radiating veins that create such a sunstar are “diffraction spikes” that are caused in photographs by circular sunlight being diffracted by the edges of a non-circular camera aperture. The same effect can be seen by the naked eye when eyelashes and/or eyelids diffract the light.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on January 8, 2026.)