Beautiful Science - Why does the sky change color at sunset?

Blue to red, why does this happen?

NAME OUR BLACK CAT IN THE COMMENTS.

Instagram -   / beautiful_sci  
Twitter -   / beautsciencevid  
Facebook -   / beautifulsci.  .



If you were to look up at the sky on a clear day, you will notice the sun is yellowish., (Don’t look directly at the sun peepz) and the sky blue. But as the sun lowers on the horizon, the colour of the sun and the sky can change dramatically to red, orange and yellow hues. But why does this happen?

The light from the sun is white, but actually consists of the seven coloured waves, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. If we were to look at the sun from space it would always appear white, but on earth the atmosphere scatters some of the light waves coming from it. This is called Rayleigh scattering and affects what colour we perceive the sky and sun as.

The waves at the red end of the spectrum are longer and at the blue end shorter. This means blue waves are more likely to hit particles in the atmosphere and scatter, hence why during the day we see the sky as blue. The sun will appear yellowish as the combination of the colour wavelengths that make it through easier, like red and green that combine to make yellow light. At high noon the sun may also appear white, as the white light coming directly from the sun has the least distance to travel through the atmosphere and less chance to bounce of particles.

We explain why the sky is blue in detail in another video you can find in the description below and at the end of this video. (Why is the sky blue).

As the sun sets in our sky the light has a longer distance to travel through the atmosphere. The blue light starts scattering so much that the light does not end up reaching us. The light in the yellow, orange and red wavelengths have more chances to scatter on the slightly longer journey whilst still making it through to our eyes.

The lower the sunset the more dominant longer wavelengths will become. This is why the colours of sunsets get deeper as the sunsets more on the horizon, turning from yellow, into orange and finally, mainly just red hues.

#sunset #sky #lightspectrum