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Why is the sky blue?
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The sky appears blue to the human eye due to a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering.
Here’s a simple explanation:
Rayleigh Scattering: When sunlight reaches the Earth’s atmosphere, it interacts with gases and particles in the air. Shorter wavelengths of light, such as blue and violet, are scattered more effectively by the gases and particles in the atmosphere than longer wavelengths like red and yellow.
Blue Light: Since blue light is scattered more than other colors in the spectrum, it bounces around in the atmosphere and ends up reaching our eyes from all directions. This is why we see the sky as blue during the day.
At Sunset and Sunrise: During sunrise and sunset, the sun is lower in the sky, and its light has to pass through more of Earth’s atmosphere. This longer path causes more scattering of the shorter blue and violet wavelengths, allowing the longer red and orange wavelengths to dominate the sky’s colors, giving us the beautiful hues we see during these times.
So, the sky appears blue primarily due to the scattering of sunlight by the Earth’s atmosphere, with shorter blue wavelengths being scattered more effectively than longer wavelengths.