Why is the sky blue? Is it because of Space or what?

Answer 1

During daylight the sky has the appearance of a deep blue surface, but this is the result of the air scattering sunlight. There is no "blue object" above the earth in any normal sense, so it is hard to say what object the sky is. The sky is thus sometimes defined as the denser gaseous zone of a planet's atmosphere. At night the sky has the appearance of a black surface or region scattered with stars. But if we then say that the sky is the entire visible universe, it would not be the same thing we see during the day.

Answer 2

The sky is blue because of a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering, which basically means that shorter-wavelength light is preferentially scattered by the air in the atmosphere compared to longer wavelength light. Imagine you're looking up at the sky. All light is coming from the sun; some directly at you, some to other parts of the earth. The light coming from the sun will be strong enough that scattering is not an issue; it will look white. Now look away from the sun, to the blue sky. If there were no atmosphere, you would *not see any light that was not coming at you directly* and the sky would appear black - it's only because the atmosphere scatters light that it is visible to you. Since shorter-wavelength (bluer) light is scattered more than longer-wavelength (redder) light, the sky is blue. Actually, this means the sky should be violet or purple, but since our eyes are more attuned to seeing red & blue and are pretty bad at seeing purples, the sky looks blue (that is, slightly to the red of violet on the color spectrum).

Answer 3

All those talking about the sky being blue because it's reflecting the ocean are wrong. (Why does the sky look just as blue in the centre of a continent - with no sea for 1000s of miles - as it does in the middle of the ocean????)

Those talking about "Rayleigh scattering" have got it right. The light from the sun gets scattered by our atmosphere. The blue end of the spectrum gets scattered much more than the red end to the extent that everywhere you look in the sky you see that blue light entering you eyes.

The only thing I'd add is why we get red skies in the morning and evening. This is because the light coming from the sun at dawn and dusk has to travel through much more atmosphere to reach your eyes. With the blue light zigging and zagging all over the sky, most of it ziggs off into space, or zaggs into the ground, and very little reaches your eyes. With the blue light mostly gone, we get to see more of the colours from the red end of the spectrum in the sky. Hence, red sky at night/morning.

Answer 4

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?
The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air.

However, much of the shorter wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all around the sky. Whichever direction you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches you. Since you see the blue light from everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

As you look closer to the horizon, the sky appears much paler in color. To reach you, the scattered blue light must pass through more air. Some of it gets scattered away again in other directions. Less blue light reaches your eyes. The color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or white.

Answer 5

The simple answer is that air is slightly blue. Imagine very very slightly bluish glass, so slightly blue that you can't even notice the blue. BUT if you put sheets and sheets of it together and put a powerflull white light at one end, the light would still look white but there would be a blue haze around it. The blue of the glass would be scattering the the blue light in all directions so if you kept adding more and more glass there would be less and less blue left for the glass to scatter and it would turn different colours...like the sky does at sunset. Does that make sense to you? Add an edit if it doesn't and I'll try to rephrase it.
P.S. Since the surface of water is reflective, as in a puddle, the sea reflects the sky, AND water is also ever so slightly blue too!!!
P.P.S Please don't listen to those guys who are saying the the sky reflects the blue ocean. In that case we should be able to look up and see a reflection of ourselves or at least the land, right?

Answer 6

The sky is blue because the Earth's atmosphere scatters the light as it arrives from the Sun. The blue (higher frequency) portion of the spectrum of visible light has more energy than the red (lower frequency) portion. Thus, the atmosphere scatters the lower frequency light more easily allowing a higher percentage of the higher frequency to penetrate. Therefore, it looks blue because the light that we see is from that part of the spectrum.

Answer 7

No and it has nothing to do with the ocean either. It is blue because short wavelengths of light (blue) get scattered by the atmosphere while other wavelengths pass straight through.

Answer 8

It's the reflection of the sun against gases in the atmosphere. That's why the sky looks black again once astronauts exit the atmosphere.

Answer 9

the air around the earth is kinda like a prisim....reflecting different wavelengths. it reflects blue cause its a shorter wavelength than say red. black occurs because there are no gases to reflect any light.

Answer 10

the sky is actually blue from the ocean reflecting off the earths atmosphere. since the earth is 80% water, you see the blue reflection. the earths atmosphere or ozone layer serves as like a mirror which reflects the blue.