I want to understand the science behind the beauty.
In: Other
We have an atmosphere.
Our atmosphere is composed of 78% nitrogin 21% oxygen and a few percent others.
Mixed in there are pollens and dust, sand from sandstorms and pollution, smog
We call them particulates.
Light comes from the sun, white light. People say the sun is yellow, it is white.
If you look straight at the sun in the middle of the day, you’ll see it’s white.
Seven colours of the spectrum are within that light, so you are chemically ( the reitna of your eye)splitting
that light into combinations of red, green and blue.
now here is what happens: white light comes down from the sun.
the particles in the atmosphere are about the same size as the wavelenght of the blue light
thus the blue light will reflect and scatter off the particles in the atmosphere.
However, as the sun goes lower on our horizen, the pathlenght of the light is much longer through the air.
So the light passes more atmosphere, more scattering so the sky gets more blue at twilight, deep blue.
much more blue gets taken out of the light of the sun via the scattering, but if you take that much blue,
the sun doens’t have blue light left, so the other side of the spectreum (red, oragen and yellow) are left.
So that is why the sunset is amber coloured / red.
If there’s a lot of dust or smoke in the air, it’ll catch the light. E.g. in California these days.
If there are *some* clouds, particularly flattish ones on the Sun’s side of the sky, they’ll be lit. When the sun is low, they may even be lit on the underside.
They are colourful because the light has to go through a lot of atmosphere, the different wavelengths (colours) pass differently and form a nice gradient.
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