• Question: Why is the sky blue?

    Asked by anon-220535 on 12 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Matthew Bareford

      Matthew Bareford answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      The sky is blue because light from the sun is scattered in all directions by the gases and particles in the air as part of Earths atmosphere. Blue light gets scattered much more than the others as it is shorter and so gets ‘reflected’ off of the smaller particles much more.

      The blue light then reaches your eye and you see blue.

      The reason the sky gets lighter as you look further away, is because more of the blue colour from the light are being ‘reflected’ by more of the gases and particles in the air, which then means less of it is able to reach our eyes, so it becomes lighter

    • Photo: Kate Timms

      Kate Timms answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      As Matthew said, the sky is blue because of the way that the light from the sun is scattered off the gasses in our atmosphere. This means that the sky can be different colours on different planets. Especially if other things than just gasses are affecting it.
      For example, the cloud cover on Venus is so thick that the sky appears a kind of orange/yellow colour – very eerie!

    • Photo: Kaitlin Wade

      Kaitlin Wade answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      The sky is blue because of the particles that float about in our atmosphere that react with the sun’s light as they scatter and reflect the sun’s light. The blue colour comes from the spectrum of the rays that hits our eyes and we see blue.

    • Photo: Rebecca Moon

      Rebecca Moon answered on 12 Jun 2019:

      Three detailed answers already that I concur with!

      Sadly most days at the moment the sky seems pretty grey!

    • Photo: Nina Rzechorzek

      Nina Rzechorzek answered on 14 Jun 2019:

      Nice no-nonsense description here:
      https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/

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