Why is the sky blue? Literately.?

Question

I am not saying this to be stupid or sound clueless but i'm not even out of highschool and have never heard the true reason. thanks if you could help.

Answer 1

refraction of light


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.

ALSO>>
WHY IS THE SUNSET RED?
As the sun begins to set, the light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to you. More of the light is reflected and scattered. As less reaches you directly, the sun appears less bright. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to orange and then to red. This is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered. Only the longer wavelengths are left in the direct beam that reaches your eyes.
The sky around the setting sun may take on many colors. The most spectacular shows occur when the air contains many small particles of dust or water. These particles reflect light in all directions. Then, as some of the light heads towards you, different amounts of the shorter wavelength colors are scattered out. You see the longer wavelengths, and the sky appears red, pink or orange.

Answer 2

The light from the sun is called "white light", because it is composed of many different colors of light that when are combined produce whiteness (this is normal light). Red light travels the slowest, purple and blue light the fastest, with the other colors in between. There are particles in the air that scatter the blue light more than the red (because of the higher frequency it hits more particles on the way to our eye), so more blue light hits our eye, so the sky appears blue. If you noticed that the sky is more blue in the middle of the sky and whiter towards the horizon, that is because there are more particles near the horizon that scatter the blue light waves, to such an extent that almost no blue light reaches our eyes. I don't know the name of my source, but it was my physics text book from two years ago. Hopefully that helps!

Answer 3

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.



uhhhh.... i hope that makes sense...

Answer 4

ok here is how it works... light isnt just clear and bright. light is actually a mixture of all colors. red,orange,yellow,green,blue,purple,and indigo. As the light shines down form the sky it is refracted by molecules of different gasses in the air. The causes the light to shine only its blue part through, (other colors obviously manage to get through to show other colors) the blue light is all we manage to see from the sky.

Answer 5

The refraction of light through oxygen makes the sky blue.

Answer 6

yeah what they said - but also - the reason it is usually blue and not some other colors is because blue is the shortest wavelegth of visible light - it is reddish at sunset and sunrise because you are looking at the light rays at a different angle than when the sun is higher in sky (red is at a longer wavelength)

Answer 7

The radio violet waves give the perception of blue as the pass through the C2O2 (ozone) in the atmosphere.

Answer 8

this is caused by the refraction of light through water, its also the reason why the sky is a reddish-orange color as the sun sets.

Answer 9

I read once that it's not actually blue. It's layers and layers and layer of (can't remember) which when looking through (or at the sky) it appears to look blue.

Answer 10

ozone, sea water reflecting and space mixed with the sunlight