The light from the Sun looks white. The atmosphere is densest (thickest) at the bottom, near the Earth. A lot of other smart people have, too. Newton’s theory of color—that light generates color, instead of the object or body that appears to contain the color—is essential when it comes to understanding why we see the sky as blue. Future US, Inc. 11 West 42nd Street, 15th Floor,

And why is it that the sunrise or the sunsets are usually red in color? During sunrise or sunset, the sky appears to change colour. The atmosphere is the mixture of gas molecules and other materials surrounding the Earth. (June 16, 2011) http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970611f.html, Encyclopedia Britannica.

And it took a long time to figure it out!

The Earth’s atmosphere is composed of lots of different air molecules. Violet light is actually scattered even a bit more strongly than blue.

Discover world-changing science. Visit our corporate site. Snowflake Chemistry - Answers to Common Questions, The Visible Spectrum: Wavelengths and Colors, Basic Facts Everyone Should Know About Clouds, The Green Flash Phenomenon and How to See It, the invisible molecules of gas that make up the atmosphere's air, B.S., Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, University of North Carolina. The Tyndall effect also comes into play, but it is not the cause of blue sky color because molecules in air are smaller than the wavelengths of visible light. What color would it be?Read More →. Why is the sky blue? While all of the light's color wavelengths are scattered, the shorter blue wavelengths are scattered more strongly -- roughly 4 times more strongly -- than the longer red, orange, yellow, and green wavelengths of light. But because our eyes are more sensitive to blue light than they are violet light, we perceive the sky as blue.

Search This Site: It took many centuries and a lot of smart people -- including Aristotle, Isaac Newton, Thomas Young, James Clerk Maxwell and Hermann von Helmholtz -- to puzzle out the answer, in part because the solution encompasses so many components: the colors in sunlight, the angle at which solar illumination travels through the atmosphe… Live Science is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Sunlight can be redirected by the air molecules and this is known as scattering. (function() { When this happens, the oscillating charges produce electromagnetic radiation at the same frequency as the incoming sunlight, but spread over all different directions. Credit: NASA. That means it has the highest frequency and energy. The size of these molecules is much smaller than the wavelengths of visible light and so the type of scattering that occurs is known as Rayleigh scattering named after Lord Rayleigh (John William Strutt) who discovered it. The different colors of light are all reflected by the particle in the same way. Violet and blue light have the shortest wavelengths and red light has the longest. You consent to our cookies if you continue to use our website. New York, When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and During sunrise or sunset, the sun's light has to pass through more of the atmosphere to reach your eyes. Credit: NASA/JPL/Texas A&M/Cornell, Astronaut John W. Young, commander of the Apollo 16 lunar landing mission, leaps from the lunar surface as he salutes the United States flag at the Descartes landing site during the first Apollo 16 extravehicular activity. The science projects, science experiments, science fair projects & ideas,science articles and all other material on this website are covered by copyright laws and may not be reproduced without permission. June 11, 1997.

Weird & Wacky, Copyright © 2020 HowStuffWorks, a division of InfoSpace Holdings, LLC, a System1 Company. The composition of the atmosphere varies, depending on your location, the weather, and many other things. var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; Mars’ atmosphere is much thinner than the Earth’s - less than 1%. What makes the sunset red? When the Sun's light reaches the Earth's atmosphere it is scattered, or deflected, by the tiny molecules of gas (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) in the air. The sky appears redder during sunrise and sunset as blue light is scattered away. This experiment demonstrates that white light is composed of all the colours of visible light in roughly the same amounts. That picture-perfect blue sky punctuated with clouds is compliments of Rayleigh scattering. At one end of the spectrum are the reds and oranges. (June 13, 2011) http://www.desy.de/user/projects/Physics/General/BlueSky/blue_sky.html, NASA's The Space Place. To understand why the sky is blue, we need to consider the nature of sunlight and how it interacts with the gas molecules that make up our atmosphere.
On a clear sunny day, the sky above us is a brilliant blue. Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors? The low density of air molecules means that the Rayleigh scattering, that causes our skies to be blue on Earth, has a very small effect on Mars. As you look closer to the horizon, the sky appears much paler in color. The color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or white. The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. Does smog really make for beautiful sunsets? gcse.type = 'text/javascript'; This range is called the electromagnetic spectrum. Feb. 2, 2002. As white light passes through our atmosphere, tiny air molecules cause it to ‘scatter’. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

White light, including sunlight, is made up of many different colors of light, each with its own corresponding wavelength. In fact, the scattering of 400-nanometer light (violet) is 9.4 times greater than the scattering of 700-nm light (red). Because that occurs much more often for blue light than for red, the sky appears blue. Prisms break up white light into its constituent colors, because different wavelengths of light refract at different angles — the colors travel at different speeds — as they pass through the prism. In a polluted sky, small aerosol particles of sulfate, organic carbon, or mineral dust further amplify the scattering of blue light, making sunsets in polluted conditions sometimes spectacular.

Visible light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see. All of this scattering mixes some of light's individual color wavelengths together again, which is why the blue appears to be diluted.

The light we see, which is called visible light, is actually made up of different wavelengths of light. (June 16, 2011) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8631798/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/why-skies-are-blue-instead-purple/, Stern, David P. "The Many Colors of Sunlight." A piece of blue glass, through which the light shines orange, seeming to behave like the sky at sunset. But what if you were out in space? There are also small amounts of other gases, plus many small solid particles, like dust, soot and ashes, pollen, and salt from the oceans. The sky is quite white near the horizon, then becomes a deeper blue at higher angles and is finally quite white again near to the Sun because of Mie scattering. When we view the setting sun on the horizon, the opposite occurs. The way they scatter sunlight is determined by how the light is refracted and internally reflected by, and diffracted around, the cloud droplets. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+.

Why not green, purple, or white like clouds? As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. This is because the sunlight that reaches us from lower in the sky has passed through more air (and therefore, has hit many more gas molecules) than that reaching us from overhead. We see a blue sky, because of the way the atmosphere interacts with sunlight. MIT used parts of this article in their online class! © 2020 Scientific American, a Division of Springer Nature America, Inc. Support our award-winning coverage of advances in science & technology.

The longer distance that the sunlight travels through the atmosphere when it is on the horizon amplifies the effect--there are more opportunities for blue light to be scattered than when the sun is overhead. Scattered light intensity is therefore proportional to the fourth power of frequency.

On Earth, the sun appears yellow. But it is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow.

To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Wiley-VCH. Light from the sun or a light bulb may look white, but it is actually a combination of many colors. It hits them, and is scattered in all directions (Rayleigh scattering). The reflected light appears white because it still contains all of the same colors. Learn more about the atmosphere. Light is a kind of energy that radiates, or travels, in waves. To find out why only blue will do, let's explore light and how it behaves. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Explore our digital archive back to 1845, including articles by more than 150 Nobel Prize winners. We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. "Why is the Sky Blue?" The shorter wavelength blue light is absorbed very little and much of it is reflected back to our eyes. So the Earth’s sky isn’t blue due to it reflecting the colour of the seas and oceans. The sky is blue because of a process called Rayleigh scattering.

However, much of the shorter … This redirecting of incoming sunlight by air molecules is called scattering. "Why is the Sky Blue?" We don’t see the blue light because it gets scattered away, but the red light isn’t scattered very much so the sky appears red.

For more details, see our Privacy Policy. The blue component of the spectrum of visible light has shorter wavelengths and higher frequencies than the red component. ©
Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.


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