Why this word is great
AFTERLIGHT — [Noun] The residual illumination that lingers after a light source has vanished, most often the faint glow persisting in the sky after sunset. From after- ("following in time or place") + light ("natural illumination"). Unlike "afterglow" (which evokes the warm, rosy hues of a receding sun) or "twilight" (which frames the transitional hour), "afterlight" is the ghost of radiance, the echo of what has already gone. It is the pale wash of sky above a blackened silhouette of trees, the last gleam on a windowpane after the lamp is extinguished, or the way a room holds onto daylight for a few breathless moments before surrendering to dark—proof that absence, too, can have its own luminous grammar.