Why is it that the sun appears or looks bigger on a sunrise or sunset.....?

Question

.... but gives very little heat during these times... but would look smaller in high noon, but would give off intense heat?

and the same question goes for the moon...... but they really look bigger when closer to the horizon...

biglohn, I know! the terms sunrise and sunset are just the acceptable terms used in th english dialect since homo sapiens learned to speak english, thats why i used the two words. anyway, thanks for the answer!

Answer 1

Light is bent as it moves trough the atmosphere. This bending makes the sun and moon apperar lager at the horizons. It also changes the colors we see. That is why we see red sunsets. The same goes for the heat waves coming trough the atmosphere. At noon the waves pass almost straight trough. Morning and evening they are bent and dispersed.

Answer 2

The Sun and Moon look bigger on the horizon because of an optical illusion - it's your brain fooling you! To prove it, the next time you see the Moon look really big on the horizon (don't do this with the Sun, since you should NEVER look at the sun without a special solar filter) put your pinky finger up at arm's length, and you'll notice you can easily cover up the Moon. Later that night, when the Moon is higher and looks its normal size, do the pinky thing again and you'll notice the Moon is actually the same size!

So why is the Sun "stronger" when it is high in the sky? Imagine a different situation entirely - using a flashlight to power a solar calculator. Should you shine the flashlight straight down on the solar cells, or at an angle? Straight down, of course! If you shine it at an angle, the light gets more spread out, and may not be concentrated enough to power the calculator. Same thing with the Sun in the sky. When it is low on the horizon, the Sun's rays are more spread out, and when it is high in the sky the Sun's rays are more concentrated (you can see this with the lengths of shadows).

Answer 3

Big John is a cocky b. He gets the answer wrong (the atmosphere does not magnify the sun and moon on the horizon), then has the audacity to criticise the questioner for using the common terms sunrise and sunset.

What a wally.

Answer 4

The heat of the sun is felt through infrared radiation. This radiation is dissipated by scattering in the atmosphere. At high noon, there is the minimum amount of scattering from the atmosphere and at set/rise there is the maximum amount (remember the earth is round, so the radiation is travelling through much more atmosphere at sunset than at high noon).

The reason the sun looks bigger is just because it is closer to the ground and to objects that you know the size of. So your eyes can directly compare the size of the sun to a building, or trees, etc. At high noon, this type of direct comparison is not possible due to the elevation of the sun in the sky.

Answer 5

The sun and the moon seem larger as they are magnified by the atmosphere. When overhead the atmosphere is only a few miles thick, when you look at sunrise or sunset then you are looking through many, many miles of atmosphere.

To add, but not part of your question, the terms "sunrise" and "sunset" are inaccurate. The sun is not rising, what you are seeing is "earth turn" as the planet turns toward the distant sun.

Answer 6

not sure but thats a good question