I have always been in love with the color of the skies. How come we see these beautiful hues of color during sunrise or sunset? Is there another reason aside from the sun reflecting its light?
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Great question! Clouds look white or blue during the day because they scatter sunlight, which is white. During sunrise and sunset, the light has to pass through more atmosphere, scattering shorter blue wavelengths and letting the longer red and orange wavelengths through, creating those beautiful hues. The effect is called Rayleigh scattering.
Clouds are white. Like all white objects, they reflect the light that hits them. Shine a red light on paper, it’ll look red.
The air around our planet scatters blue light in all directions, but lets red go straight. The result is that light coming straight at us from the sun looks red or yellow, while light coming scattered from the air makes the sky blue.
So when this filtered red light from the sun goes through a *lot* of air, as happens with sunrise and sunset, it gets very red. Hits a white cloud, and the cloud looks red:
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