afterglow

noun afterglows · after-glow

1. countable, uncountable The glow seen in the sky after sunset. That the sunset in Egypt is gorgeous, every body knows; but I, for one, was not aware that there is a renewal of beauty, some time after the sun has departed and left all grey. […] everything begins to brighten again in twenty minutes;—the hills are again purple or golden,—the sands orange,—the palm

   Similar: afterlight

2. countable, uncountable The light emitted by an incandescent object while cooling. 1984, Paul Auster (as Paul Benjamin), Squeeze Play, London: Faber & Faber, 1991, Chapter 19, p. 176, Nothing will matter to you more than that [base]ball. It will hold you so completely that when you at last file out and return to the normal world, it will stay with you like the afterglow of a flash
3. countable, uncountable The light emitted by a phosphor after excitation.
4. countable, uncountable The mildly euphoric feeling experienced after a pleasurable experience, especially after an orgasm or drug-induced high. […] he threw down his book, stretched his legs towards the embers in the grate, and clasped his hands at the back of his head, in that agreeable afterglow of excitement when thought lapses from examination of a specific object into a suffusive sense of its connections with all the rest of our existe
5. countable, uncountable An afterparty. There's an afterglow with singing after the evening worship.

   Similar: afterparty

Opposite: foreglow, hangover, postcoital tristesse