Why is ther sunset red?

Answer 1

Believe it or not, the sunset looks red for the same reason that the sky looks blue during the day! It's true!

"White" light from the Sun contains all the wavelengths of light, every color. As the light passes through the atmosphere, a lot of it goes pretty much straight, but some of it - more blue than anything - gets scattered and comes back to your eye from every direction. So the blue sky color light is sunlight that got scattered. Some of the light doesn't get scattered so much, but it does get refracted, and red more than other colors. So when you're looking at the red sunset - or the red sunRISE, same thing - you're seeing what's left of the white sunlight after the blue got scattered back over the daytime part of the Earth, and the red made it to the horizon.

Answer 2

The phenomenon is called Rayleigh Scattering. As the white light from the Sun penetrates the atmosphere, some of it is scattered, with higher frequencies being scattered more than lower frequencies. Coming straight down to the surface when the Sun is high in the sky, the higher frequency (blue) light is scattered, giving the sky its blue color. Near sunrise and sunset when the Sun is low on the horizon, the light passes "sideways" through a thicker layer of air. The blue light has mostly been scattered into space or down to the ground, so the predominant remaining light is reddish.

As the Sun sets, and the sky shades from blue to red, the sky will momentarily take on every color in between. There's one very short moment just as the Sun passes the horizon when the green spectrum of light is refracted to your eyes. Sailors call this the "green flash" and it only lasts for a few seconds, but can be very striking when you see it. This is typically seen only at sea or by aviators, because terrain effects over land will typically spoil the effect.

Answer 3

The red color of a sunset is caused by the scattering of sunlight by particles and gases in the Earth's atmosphere. When the sun is low on the horizon during sunset, its light passes through a thicker layer of atmosphere, scattering shorter wavelengths of light like blue and green, while allowing longer wavelengths like red and orange to pass through, creating the red hue.

Answer 4

This is because all the shorter wavelengths have been scattered by the air. The length of the waves is why the sky can appear red.