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Looking for a word which refers to the sky directly opposite a sunset. Naïvely assumed it woulf be called nightrise, but that word does not seem to be in use.

Found a word, noctiluca (from nox (“night”) +‎ luceō (“to shine”), which I've been using as a placeholder, but if anyone other than I reads it, they'll miss the point a bit.

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  • antipodal sky, where antipodal means: diametrically opposed to something.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jul 13, 2018 at 23:03
  • I think I would call it "the darkening eastern night sky".
    – WS2
    Commented Jul 13, 2018 at 23:27
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    'Antisolar sky' is the area of the sky opposite the sun; 'anticrepuscular sky' might suit your purposes better. See Anti-solar (Anti-crepuscular) rays.
    – JEL
    Commented Jul 13, 2018 at 23:47
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    Eastern works for Earth.
    – Phil Sweet
    Commented Jul 14, 2018 at 0:23
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    The Twilight Zone... I'll see myself out...
    – Skooba
    Commented Jul 17, 2018 at 15:09

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This seems to be the anti-twilight point, but if sky is clear and you see the phenomenon of a reddening at that point, you are seeing the antitwilight arch, more poetically referred to as the Belt of Venus.

Merriam-Webster has:

antitwilight [noun]

variants antitwilight arch:

the pink or purplish glow in the eastern sky after sunset

A derivation from night+shine might be too close to zodiacal light for those familiar with this sort of terminology. That's basically a diffuse band of light across the sky along the ecliptic plane. Embedded at the brightest point of that band is gegenschein which is at the true antisolar point.

But you're looking at the horizon opposite a sunset, which is not the antisolar point after sunset. The glow remaining there is at the antitwilight point.

[other quotes from Astronoo and Wikipedia]

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