Why does the Sky change colours???

Have you ever seen a beautiful sunset or sunrise where the sky is a mixture of orange and red colours? The view always takes my breath away. The sky changes colours every day, some of the changes in colour may be more significant than others. But I’ve always wondered how the sky changes to some spectacular colours and what the geography behind it is.

Take a look at this video where a news reporter tells us some facts about why the sky changes colours.

As the reporter said, the sky changes colour due to the size of the wavelengths of light. We see the most incredible colours in the Sky during the sunrise and sunset. Think about it. When the sun is rising or setting, it is positioned at a different angle than at the normal daytime. The angle where the sun sits at means that the longer wavelengths are the ones that we can see with our eyes. When the sun is not pointing directly at a point in the earth, then there are more gas molecules between the sun and us. This means we no longer see the short blue wavelengths but we see the longer wavelengths which are red, orange and yellow colours.

The sunset usually has brighter colours than the sunrise. This is because throughout the daytime, humans and animals are walking around and kicking dust up into the light reflection. This will make the sunset colours more vibrant than the sunrise colours. Also, the sunset would look more spectacular in a big city than in the country side because there is more pollution going up into the air in a city than in the countryside!

 

I hope you learnt something new after reading this post. Check out my next Blog post where I will be explaining how a rainbow occurs and I will also be pointing out an amazing place in the world where the Sky changes to the most beautiful colours.

Sources:

http://static.sewanee.edu/chem/Chem&Art/Detail_Pages/ColorProjects_2004/Adams/Adams%20project.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wK_NXwUISY