Why is the atmosphere colored blue during daytime and pitch black at nighttime?

Answer 1

same reason why you can't drive/see with you brights on in a fog.

try it.

turning up the lights makes the fog look 10 times thicker and whiter.

same thing happens in the sky.

I think the term is diffusion

meaning light bounces of the particles in the air illuminating each one with each bounce.

less light means less particles get illuminated.

Answer 2

Everyone likes to label it as Rayleigh Scattering but still very few explain that term. The Sun emits pure white light. As the sun comes up or sets, the light has more air molecules to travel thru, giving a longer bend to the white light, the reds having a longer frequency, and due to the longer bend of the light from the amount of air, we see reds at sunrise and sunset. AS the Sun climbs higher, it goes thru less air to get to ours eyes. Hence the light is not refracted as much, less bend you might say, blues have a shorter wavelength, so we see blue. Notice on clear cloudless days, the sky is real blue in the middle around noon and appears whitish at the horizon. We are looking at light traveling away from us at the horizon so we see the white light as from the sun. On cloudy or foggy days, less blue because the white light is being filtered by the greyness of the clouds or fog.

Answer 3

Light coming from the sun is what's called "white light" White light contains all the colors of the rainbow. When it enters Earth's atmosphere this light is separated into its individual colors by chemical elements in the atmosphere and scattered across the sky. Nitrogen is the most abundant element in our atmosphere, and that element scatters the color blue across our sky more than the other colors. In space, there is no atmosphere to separate colors from the white light and space looks black.

Answer 4

The sky appears blue because of the scattering of light from tiny particles. The tiny particles are very small so they scatter shorter wavelengths more than longer wavelengths and blue is the shortest wavelength of the visible spectrum.

The sky is dark at night because the suns light is blocked by the earth. It is not pitch black if the moon is bright because the suns light reflects off the moon.

Answer 5

In daytime the atmosphere scatters short wave radiations by particles of dust or ice the short wave radiations coincide with the blue color, at sunset the angle of light blocks blue light and lets long wave radiations go which coincide with red and orange radiations.

Answer 6

The sun causes the sunlight to reflect off the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere it gives it, its shallow ocean view to the sky. In the night time the sun is no longer reflecting on this side of the earth so you get a clear view of the night time sky on a clear and uncitylighted sky..

Answer 7

The sun light passing through the gases in the atmosphere during the day gives it the blue color. At night there is no sun light, so there is no blue sky. Hope this helps.

Answer 8

air pressure mixed with the sun light