Y sky appear dark to astronaut in space if there vacuum and nothing to absorb light. So sky should appear wite

Question

Why does the sky appear dark to an astronaut in space when there is vacuum in space and therefore nothing to absorb the light. Sun gives out white light. And there is no matter to absorb white light, so sky should appear white and not dark? Because something appears dark only when it absorbs all the light from the source and does not reflect any light. But there is vacuum in space and therefore nothing to absorb all of the light. All of the books answer the question 'Why does the sky appear dark to an astronaut in space?' as "In the earth's atmosphere, there are minute particles that scatter only light of short wavelength, i.e. blue light. But in space, there is complete vacuum in space, so there is no particulate matter to scatter light and therefore the sky appears dark to an astronaut.' But I have mentioned my argument as stated above.

Answer 1

Sunlight doesn't light up space because there is nothing there for it to light up. Light in space travels in straight lines, so you only see sunlight when you look at the sun.

As for the rest of the universe, if you assume an infinite universe, you would expect it to be bright with the light of an infinity of stars. This is called Olbers' paradox. But the intensity of the light decreases with the square of the distance, and at some point the stars are too far away and receding too fast for their light to ever reach us. So the actual amount of starlight from very distant stars is negligible.

Answer 2

It is actually exactly the opposite of what you would think

We see colors because of the way light is reflected off of objects or substances. Light can either be absorbed into the object (or substance) or reflected. If a an object or substance absorbs all wavelengths (colors) except blue, blue will be reflected and that is the color we see. If a substance absorbs all wavelengths except red and yellow the object will appear orange. If an object or substance absorbs no wavelengths but reflects them all, it is white - not black, as you might think. The color white is a combination of all colors. Black is the absence of any color.

Space is black because there are no substances or objects to reflect back any color (or all colors, which would make it white). That is also why the astronauts see the earth as we see it in photos, but the space around it is black. The light from the sun is reflected back as the blues and greens and browns that we see, but the space around the earth is just that - empty space and therefore does not reflect back any colors, so it is black.

Answer 3

The sky appears blue because dust scatters light from the sun like a frosted light bulb diffuses the light. There is a minor effect also that oxygen glows a little in sunlight. In outer space, nothing diffuses the light and there is no skyglow because there is no oxygen and no dust. You can look right past the bright sun surface to see the dark sky behind it.

Don't forget the sun is still in the sky at night. We are just in the shadow of the Earth. The atmosphere we look thru at night is also in shadow so we see the sky almost the way it would look in space. The air scatters star light a little, but you can't deny it is black, not bright.

Answer 4

for one- luminous intensity decreases as you move futher and further away from the sorce such that a few trillion light years is a big difference, in luminous intesity, so the strenghth of light reaching the space guys are so weak its practically zero

second- light must also be reflected other wise it would travel further and further into the nothingness- thus no color

third- there are many objects floating in between the space guys and the light source which is usually billions of light years away, meaning alot of "star blinds" which block most of the light

forth- its called a black hole and light can not escape

fifth- the earth is round and scathers the light at angles away from the space guys

sixth- the atmosher is not always black to the space guys as some light does reflect off and towards the space station

Answer 5

Light does not appear white unless it hits something and reflects off of it. Hence, since space is "empty" (not really, but for this argument, we assume it is) there is very little for the light to strike and reflect from.
Actually, there is a great deal of particulate matter in space, such as atoms of hydrogen, helium, dust, ice, and dark matter. It's just not as packed together as it would be in a solid or gaseous form.

Answer 6

it has little to do with absortion of light. mostly reflection of light. in an atmosphere there is gas and particles to reflect light. because of our atmoshere's chemicals our sky appears blue. more blue light is reflected then any other light. mars sky appears more orange. in space there is nothing to reflect the light so it appears dark. if you are standing on the moon the sky is very dark because the moon does not have enough of an atmosphere ( gas or particles in it ) to reflect any light.
remember you never see an object on the earth only the light reflecting off of it. if you keep that in mind then you can understand why space is dark. when you have enough gas collected in one spot in space, due to gravity or whatever then you can see beautiful cloudlike objects in dark space. a perfect example is the eagle nebula.