Question about the earth and <span title="space?????????????????????">space????????????????????...</span>

Question

Why is the sky blue. Does the sun make the sky blue? Does the ocean make it blue? Why is it that if you go up in altitude during the day you still see the sun and blue sky. Why is it that in space its always night? What would happen if you kept going up into outer space in the day time? Would you see daylight in outer space? Why is the moon always nighttime? Is there any daylight on the moon? If you kept going up in altitude and kept going and going and it was daytime with sun, what would you see as you get further from earth? Why is all the pictures of space look like night? If you kept going up and up and it was blue sky and sun and daylight what happens to the blue sky after a while when you go further and further from earth? What would the sky look like as you go further from earth during the daytime? Why is it that when you go up in altitude it gets colder, but your going closer to the sun? If you go up in altitude during the day, your going in the direction of the sun?

Answer 1

Relax!! you&#039;re making me nervous

Answer 2

So many questions---------- all in ONE POSTING!

Answer 3

All this information is available online if you just do a bit of reading.

Lets look at the big picture and answer all of these at once.

Background:

Sunlight appears white to us, but is actually made up of different wavelengths of light that have different colours.  You can see those colours in a rainbow - that is sunlight that is split into the different colours by raindrops in the atmosphere acting as tiny prisms.

The sky is blue:

Blue light has shorter wavelengths than red light, and the molecules in our atmosphere can scatter and refract blue light better than it can red light.  So some of the blue wavelengths in sunlight is scattered by the atmosphere, sort of &quot;painting&quot; the sky blue.  Since some of the blue light is missing from the sunlight that reaches our eyes, sunlight looks yellow to us.

The sky is not blue from the ocean.

Space:

As you go higher in altitude, there is less atmosphere and therefore fewer molecules to scatter the blue light.  So as you get higher the sky becomes darker (even though the sun is in the sky).  In space, there aren&#039;t enough molecules of anything to scatter sunlight, so space appears black.

There is no daylight in space, because &quot;daylight&quot; implies an atmosphere to scatter the sunlight.

Space is always black once you are outside the atmosphere, it doesn&#039;t matter if its day or night on Earth.

Its gets colder the farther you go in altitude for the same reason - heat needs something (like the atmosphere) to hold and transmit it to us.  Less atmosphere, less heat.

In space, there is no heat (the temperature in space is about -270 degrees Celsius).

The moon:

The moon is visible to us because it reflects sunlight.  The moon moves around the Earth, and that means that the surface of the moon that is lit by the sun sometimes faces away from us and we don&#039;t see the moon.

At any time, half the moon is in sunlight and half is in darkness - the moon&#039;s &quot;day&quot; is about 4 Earth weeks long, so daytime on the moon is 2 weeks, and night on the moon is also 2 weeks.

There is no atmosphere on the moon, so the sky will be black (just like in space).  But if you were on the sunlit side of the moon the surface would be very bright (like a sandy beach in sunshine) but the sky would be black.

Answer 4

Ummm, what eri said!

Answer 5

1)  Rayleigh scattering.

2)  Yes.

3)  No.

4)  See number 1.

5)  Because there&#039;s not a lot of stuff in space for light to reflect off of, and not enough light from stars to light it up - for your eyes anyway.

6)  It would be dark pretty fast.

7)  You would see the Sun, but space wouldn&#039;t look like the sky.

8)  It&#039;s not.  Half the time the Moon is up during the day instead.  Most people don&#039;t notice because the Sun is much brighter, but it&#039;s not hard to spot.

9)  Yes.  Half of the Moon is always illuminated by the Sun, and half is dark.  But no part of the Moon is always dark.

10)  The Earth would get smaller as you went away.

11)  Because space is dark.

12)  It gets darker.

13)  You&#039;re not really getting significantly closer to the Sun.  You&#039;re just getting up above the thick, warmer atmosphere.