I was just looking at the sunset and got me thinking ... How come when the sun go's it turns color .?

Question

when the sun go's down, how come it turns yellow orange then fire red. Then it leaves?

Answer 1

The color has to do with the angle at which the suns rays are hitting the particles on the eaths surface. Also there is some bending of the light around the earth so as it sets the wavelength of the rays is lengthened and the reds and oranges appear.

Answer 2

Dood, I saw the sun turn color the other day with "Towley" from the SouthPark show and we were just blown away. After we came down we asked the same question you did. We didn't find the answer, we went back to firing one up and enjoying the Moon rise. But I think it has something to do with the different elements in the atmosphere working on the horizon.

Answer 3

Most of the answers here are correct. This one is just simpler.

The blue light is scattered easily *hence the blue sky*

The Reds are not scattered as bad hence the red sun at the point where the light has to travel the farthest through the atmosphere *sun rise and sun set.

Answer 4

There is some law in Physics that is called "Rayleigh Scattering Law". It deals with the scattering of light rays of various colours by the air molecules in the atmosphere. It states "The amount of scattering of light rays by the particles in the atmosphere is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelenght of the light rays." In simpler terms, the scattering of light rays depends upon the colour of the light rays. You should also be knowing that light from the Sun has all the seven constituents colours of the rainbow. Violet & its neighbouring colours gets scattered the most, according to the law. During the noon time, Sun is closest to the place from which you are seeing it, so the Violet & Blue colours get scattered and the sky appears Blue, while Red gets scattered the least and is centered around the Sun alone. During sun-rise and sun-set, the Sun is farthest from the place from which you are seeing it, and so Blue light gets scattered away in all directions even before it reaches our eyes and so it gets lost in the atmosphere, whereas Red light is able to withstand such long distance of scattering and so the Sun appears Reddish-Orange during sun-rise and sun-set. Hope you understood.

Answer 5

Refraction of the sun's light in the atmosphere based on the angle that the sun's light is hitting the atmosphere. It's the same reason it's blue in the daytime.

Answer 6

The pretty colors are due to the sun's low angle and how the light refracts with the atmosphere.

Answer 7

As we age the pigment cells in our follicles die, for this reason there is way less melanin in our hair strands. whilst there is way less or no melanin in our hairs it turns sparkling, making it seem white/gray. that's biology sweetie. EDIT: haha ok. i do no longer know the respond to that, and that i'm no longer approximately to aim and do learn. yet that query already has an empirical answer. Any scientific expert might know. that's no longer a philosophical question interior the slightest. that's purely a scientific question. as quickly as returned, even the respond on your "philosophical" question is purely biology. Take care.

Answer 8

color is the wavelength of lights.
As the sun goes down it goes thru more and more of the atm. , so the most of its energy is absored by the atm.
By the time it turn red and just before it disappeared, you are already looking at the reflection of the sun, and not the sun directly.

Answer 9

all the light is refracted exept for the reds and the dark oranges. these don't get refracted because the have a differant frequencey than the other colors

Answer 10

Because of the refection of light off the Earth's atmosphere causes it to change colors.