This is probably a silly question but why is the sky look blue?

Answer 1

A clear cloudless day-time sky is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.

Answer 2

Not a silly question, but one that has been asked and answered a time or two. Just put it into a good search engine. When I did...

why is the sky blue Showing 1-10 of 17,460,000

Check out one of the over 17 million answers.

Answer 3

The sky is blue due to an atmospheric effect called Rayleigh scattering - certainly not because its reflecting the ocean which people sometimes say! Rayleigh scattering involves the scattering of light by molecules smaller than the wavelength of light. It has a smaller effect on colours with longer wavelengths and that is why the sky is blue - and also in fact why the sun is yellow - if you added up all the blue tint in the sky and focused it in the area of the sun you would get its actual colour of bright white, which is what you’d see out in space.

Physicists used to say that Rayleigh diffraction was responsible for the reddish tint in sunrise and sunset because the light had to travel through more atmosphere to reach us however this is currently disputed and there is another optical theorem at work called 'Lorenz-Mie theory'.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/questio...
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/ge...
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hba...
http://www.exo.net/~pauld/physics/why_is...

Kind regards.

Answer 4

I think I've seen this exact same question asked a dozen times. There is a search bar where it says "search for questions" and if you typed in "why sky blue" I'll bet there are a huge number of answers already on file. So, no, it is not a silly question, but yes, it IS silly to ask this particular question yet again.

The answer is, the sky is NOT blue, it is black. Any astronomer can tell you the sky is mostly black except for pinpoints of various colors of stars.The reason why you see blue during the daylight is that is the color least absorbed by dust, dirt, pollution and water vapor in the atmosphere, which means it is the color which refracts the best. By the way, the sky over major cities such as Beijing and Los Angeles is reddish-brown because of the pollution from oxides of nitrogen

Answer 5

The sky is the part of the atmosphere or of outer space visible from the surface of any astronomical object. It is difficult to define precisely for several reasons. During daylight the sky of Earth has the appearance of a deep blue surface, as the result of the air's scattering of sunlight.[1][2][3][4] The sky is 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.

re-wikipedia

Answer 6

Scattering. The blue colour of the sky is caused by the scattering of sunlight off the molecules of the atmosphere. This scattering, called Rayleigh scattering, is more effective at short wavelengths (the blue end of the visible spectrum). Therefore the light scattered down to the earth at a large angle with respect to the direction of the sun's light is predominantly in the blue end of the spectrum.

Answer 7

I don't know, but I know why is the oceans look blue. It's simply because of the reflection of the blue sky. So , why is the sky look blue? If it is not blue, the oceans wouldn't be blue. LOL

Answer 8

The blue color of the sky is due to "Rayleigh scattering". My teach said 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.


Link to what is Rayleigh scattering - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering

Answer 9

Our sky would be black if it were not for our atmosphere to turn it blue. I prefer blue, how about you?

Answer 10

Rayleigh scattering