The Planet Without A Horizon II

A film of Poul Anderson's The Game Of Empire would have to show views on the horizonless planet, Daedalus, including the sun ring instead of a sunset. In The Planet Without A Horizon, I tried to summarize Anderson's description of the sun ring but did I do it justice? (Googling for relevant images, I found an appropriate Biblical quotation.)

The situation on Daedalus is that pressure, temperature gradients etc refract light around the globe. Theoretically, looking through a telescope, you would see the back of your head although, of course, mountains, haze etc prevent this.

In CHAPTER TEN, Anderson's description of the Daedalan night begins:

"Never before had Diana seen so far over the horizonless world." (p. 297)

- and ends well over a page later:

"The forests ashore were full of shadow, but the river sheened like mercury on its murmurous course." (p. 298)

Diana has visited Daedalus before but most of her life has been spent on Imhotep where the sun sinks below the horizon. Ahead of the riverboat, she sees the river and its valley dwindle and merge into a single shining thread. She is seeing far around the curve of the planet but does the single thread seem to her to curve upward and does it eventually simply disappear in the distance? To her left, beyond the forest, prairie does blur "...in haziness." (p. 297) To her right, mountains that would otherwise have been below a horizon are "...toylike..." (ibid.) When the sun has sunk far enough, there is not darkness ahead but a remote gleam that has to be the ocean which is invisibly far by day. Before the gleam appeared, the shining thread of the river valley had stretched "...between burnished green darknesses..." (ibid.) - the forest on both sides of it. It becomes possible to look directly at the golden-red solar disc which spreads into a step pyramid (why that shape?) and stretches around what would otherwise have been a horizon. Day becomes not night but "...glimmering dusk..." (p. 298), light enough to read by, with no stars and only one planet, nearby Imhotep. The lights of Aurea and Paz behind and some villages ahead remain visible although everything else fades into dimness. Sunlight becomes a complete circle.

Presumably, when Patricius is above the antipodes, its light is being refracted equally around the planet and the circle will be of uniform height and brightness? What Anderson writes here is that the ring:

"...was broadest and brightest in the direction of Patricius, a little wider than the disc by day." (ibid.)

At that point, it is orange with some white. Narrowing, it reddens. The sky above the ring is pale blue where the sun descended, purple at the other side and violet at the zenith.