Why is the sunset red and orange and the sky blue ..why isn't the sky red?

Question

Jan k can I talk to you on messenger?

Answer 1

I know this one dude!

It's because red has a longer wavelength than blue. Imagine this, waves are hitting the legs of a pier, really large waves (those with longer wavelengths) are not affected too much by the obstructing legs of the pier, they just kind of bend around the legs and go undeviated. Shorter waves however, are adversely affected by the obstructing legs and get reflected back.

Think of red light as the longer waves and the blue light as the smaller shorter waves. The legs of the pier are analogous to the dust particles scattered in the atmosphere of earth between the sun and us. Thus the red light passes through these dust particle obstructions without much deviation, and thus the sun looks red. However, the blue light is scattered many times with multiple reflections from many dust particles randomly and thus reachs us from ALL DIRECTIONS. That is why wherever you look the sky looks blue due to scattered blue light (This is known as the RAMAN EFFECT, discovered by an Indian physicist Dr CV RAMAN in the early twentieth century)

During sunset, even the red light gets somewhat scattered, as the light has to travel a longer distance before reaching our eyes (due to the slant of the elevation of the sun). Travelling a longer distance means that even the red light now has the opportunity to get scattered a bit by the dust particles in the air..

That answer your question?

Answer 2

Simply put in lay terms, the sky is black , or without color. We are simply seeing the reflection of the water that most of our planet is. If you've seen pics from space, you'll notice that there doesn't seem to be a sky.

At sunset the Sunlight skims through our atmosphere on an angle, this illusion depends where on earth you are.


Viewing this from space, It ain't necessarily so

Answer 3

Light shift is part of it. The biggest part is due to dust, smog and other contaminants in the air that refract the sun light so we see the reds and oranges.

The old sailors had a saying, "Red sun in Morn, sailors take warn (the day will have bad weather). Red sun at Night sailors delight (the next day will be beautiful with good breeze).

Answer 4

remember the demonstation with the prism?

the sunlight is made up of wave lengths of light. Blue travels the shortest distance and red the longest.

when the sun is up, the blue light has a shorter wave length and travels through the atmosphere with less filtering, ie. blue sky.

when the sun sets, the filtering by the atmosphere affects the other wave lengths more then red, so you see more red.

since the red is a longer wave length, it travels farther. the sun has more atmosphere to travel through when it sets, ie. red sun sets.

Answer 5

Because. The light shift or something like that. Cue the scientific people.

Answer 6

cuz it duzn't feel like it