Conclusion why the sky is blue

As the Sun gets lower in the sky, its light is passing through more of the atmosphere to reach you. Even more of the blue light is scattered, allowing the reds and yellows to pass straight through to your eyes. Sometimes the whole western sky seems to glow.

The sky appears red because small particles of dust, pollution, or other aerosols also scatter blue light, leaving more purely red and yellow light to go through the atmosphere. For example, Mars has a very thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide and filled with fine dust particles.

During the daytime, the Martian sky takes on an orange or reddish color. But as the Sun sets, the sky around the Sun begins to take on a blue-gray tone. The top image shows the orange-colored Martian sky during the daytime and the bottom image shows the blue-tinted sky at sunset.

Our World: Sunsets and Atmospheres. In fact, white light travels in a straight line, and when this light separates, it becomes wavy. These waves show up in different colors, with red being the least wavy, and blue being the most wavy. What does all this have to do with the color of the sky? This explains why we see the sky as blue most of the time, though you can see it is almost an optical illusion.

However, there are some nuances to this perception. The sunlight reaching us from low in the sky has passed through even more air than the sunlight reaching us from overhead. So, as you approach a horizon, the truth of the white light becomes more apparent. And what about sunsets? There are a variety of reasons why sunset is a time of myriad colors. If the air is polluted with small particles, natural or otherwise, the sunset will be more red. In addition, the sky around the sun is viewed as red, plus the light that directly emits from the sun.

This is due to the fact that light scatters best through small angles, and blue light is easier to spread long distances,. Represented exclusively by Greenlight. Lee Falin earned a B. Jump to Navigation. Why Is the Sky Blue? August 17, We are currently experiencing playback issues on Safari. If you would like to listen to the audio, please use Google Chrome or Firefox.

In this case the sunlight that passes through air with these particles suspended has red light scattered away leaving the sun or moon looking bluish. This is rare but has happened on occasion when volcanoes or forest fires load the atmosphere with particles of just the right size. In contrast to Earth, the Martian atmosphere is quite dusty, and there the sky tends to be orange, sometimes with blue sunsets. This is because the dust particles are much larger than the carbon dioxide molecules which make up the atmosphere.

The fact that the atmosphere is very thin on Mars means scattering from dust is relatively more important than it would be on Earth. Portsmouth Climate Festival — Portsmouth, Portsmouth. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom.