• Question: Is the sky really blue?

    Asked by anon-191172 to Kathryn, Graeme, Chris, Anne, Agnes, Adam on 9 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Anne Green

      Anne Green answered on 9 Nov 2018:

      The sky appears blue because of the scattering of light from the Sun as it travels through the Earth’s atmosphere. The light from the Sun is made of all the colours of the rainbow. The blue light scatters off of molecules in the air which gives the sky its blue colour. This is also why sunsets and sunrises are red. At those times the light has to travel through more air so the blue light is all scattered away leaving behind only the red light. You can do an experiment yourself to see how this works by shining light through water with dettol in (the dettol mimics the molecules in the air). You can see the experiment being done about 7 minutes into this YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKS3-npxgls

    • Photo: Kathryn

      Kathryn answered on 10 Nov 2018:

      Due to the scattering of light in the atmosphere is appear blue to us. So yes it is really blue. You could say that about anything of colour.

    • Photo: Agnes Wojtusiak

      Agnes Wojtusiak answered on 12 Nov 2018:

      I guess if you were to look from outside the atmosphere, it would look different! Apparently on Mars it looks more pinkish-red because the atmosphere is different, so it all depends on where you’re looking from 🙂

    • Photo: Graeme Poole

      Graeme Poole answered on 13 Nov 2018:

      Sort of – the sky looks blue because the Nitrogen in our atmosphere scatters the blue light from the Sun.

    • Photo: Adam McGuinness

      Adam McGuinness answered on 14 Nov 2018:

      Great explanations there!

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