Why does the sky turn red at sunrise and sunset?

Question

Why does the sky turn red at sunrise and sunset?

I'd like real but understandable answeres please.

Answer 1

When light passes into a more dense medium (here from space into the earth's atmosphere), its rays are bent (here downward). Now, white light consists of a spectrum of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet (the rainbow colors) - all with different wave lengths. Violet light has the shortest wave length and red light has the longest wave length. Light with shorter wave lengths are bent more than light with longer wave lengths. So, at sunset, the violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow and orange light reaches earth, but it reaches earth to the west of you and you see only the red light.

Addendum: I should add that there is always dispersion, so the color at sunset (as well as at sunrise) is never perfectly red. Also, the earth's atmosphere is merely a type of prism, and for a good illustration of the effects of a prism you may enter "refraction" on Wikipedia's search engine.

Answer 2

Because the sunlight has to pass through more of the atmosphere at sunrise and sunset.

The atmosphere contains billions of dust particles and water droplets. Sunlight is scattered as it encounters these particles and molecules, with short wavelengths being more efficiently scattered than long wavelengths. This is called Ray leigh Scattering.

Blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light and, at sunset when the sun is low on the horizon, the sunlight has to pass through more atmosphere than it does when the sun is directly overhead. This means that as the sun sets the blue light has been filtered out by the thicker layer of atmosphere, leaving only the red, orange and yellow light for us to see.

And, of course, for the rest of the day when the sun is overhead it has to pass through less atmosphere before we see it, so the blue light hasn't been scattered - and we can still see it.

Answer 3

To delight or warn shepherds.

Answer 4

Well . i really dont know this answer,, but u can always look it up on the interent .