why is the color of the sky orange during sunrise and sunset?
--pls help me on here-- thanks :)
and the related question is why is the sky blue during the day?
The answer is Rayleigh Scattering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering
Red and orange light is scattered less than other colors by air (and all gases). This is becasue of a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering.
The light that reaches your eye from the sun at sunrise and sunset has to pass through a much longer layer of atmosphere, since it passes through obliquely rather than straight down from above. This results in so much scattering of the other shorter-wavelngth colors that only red and orange light remain from the direction of the sun. The rest of the light is scattered away to the give blue sky its color.
During sunrise and sunset, the color of the sky appears orange due to a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. To understand this phenomenon, let me explain.
First, it's important to note that sunlight appears white, but it actually consists of all the colors of the rainbow. When sunlight passes through the Earth's atmosphere, it encounters molecules and tiny particles, such as nitrogen, oxygen, and dust.
These particles scatter the sunlight in all directions, but the amount of scattering depends on the wavelength of the light. Shorter wavelengths, like blue and violet, are scattered more than longer wavelengths, like red and orange.
Now, as the sun nears the horizon during sunrise or sunset, its light has to travel through a larger portion of the Earth's atmosphere. This means that more of the blue and violet light is scattered away by the particles in the atmosphere, leaving behind primarily the longer wavelengths - reds and oranges - to reach our eyes.
As a result, the sky appears orange during those times of the day because the shorter blue and violet wavelengths are mostly scattered away, while the longer red and orange wavelengths dominate what we see.
So, to summarize, the color of the sky appears orange during sunrise and sunset due to the scattering of shorter wavelengths of light by particles in the Earth's atmosphere, which allows the longer wavelengths, particularly red and orange, to be more visible.