The sky on a clear day is blue. You may have asked, why is this so? Why not red, yellow or purple?
Many people say that Paradise blue for the reflection of the sea. But it turned out to be just a myth. Blue skies are caused by three factors, namely sunlight, particles in the atmosphere, and human sight.
For more details, see explanation the following is quoted from the page NASA!
Also read: The peak of the Gemini Epsilon meteor shower enlivens the October sky
1. The sky is blue due to the sunlight. How come?
You need to know that sunlight is actually made up of many different color spectra consisting of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and purple. The color spectrum has different wavelengths.
Red has a longer wavelength than the others. But the various colors turned blue after arriving on earth. Why does this happen? To answer this question we need to know what is really happening in the Earth’s atmosphere.
2. What happens in the earth’s atmosphere?
atmospheric illustration (pexels.com/Pixabay)We may not realize that when we look at the sky we are actually looking at the Earth’s atmosphere, which is a collection of air. The particles in the air consist mainly of nitrogen and oxygen, the rest is pollution, dust, air vapor and so on.
These particles interact with sunlight as sunlight enters the Earth’s atmosphere. This interaction provokes Rayleigh scattering or Rayleigh light scattering. Blue, indigo and violet light, which have short wavelengths of light, are scattered in all directions and absorbed by molecules in the air.
So why isn’t the sky purple? Whereas purple has a shorter wavelength of light than blue. This is because the sun radiates blue on the earth with more energy than purple.
3. Human vision is more sensitive to blue color
illustration of eyes and light color (pexels.com/Ennie Horvath)Our retina contains millions of cone cells that are sensitive to the color of light in bright conditions. Cone cells are sensitive to red, blue and green light. So that if our eyes are told to choose between blue or purple, surely our eyes will choose blue.
Well, this is why the sky is blue. I hope this article can answer your questions. Being curious is great!
Read also: 5 scientific reasons why the stars in the sky are not the same as the planets
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