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Why Are Sunsets Red?

Published on Nov 21, 2015

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PRESENTATION OUTLINE

Why Are Sunsets Red?

SUNLIGHT

Different colors of light, each with a different wavelength.
Essentially, sunlight is made up of R O Y G B I V, like the visible light in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Photo by hangdog

SCATTERS

Light travelling through the atmosphere
When light travels through the atmosphere, it scatters at an amount that depends on its frequency.
Photo by brewbooks

Aerosols

are what cause light scattering
Aerosols are tiny particles in the atmosphere. They cause the scattering of light.

As the sun sets...

It travels through a thicker layer of the atmosphere.
As the sun sets, it travels through a thicker layer of the atmosphere when compared to the sun at noon.

When light travels through atmosphere

Blue light is scattered by aerosols. Red/orange colours are made visible.
Remember that sunlight is made up of different colors. When sunlight travels through this longer path in the atmosphere, blue light is scattered by more aerosols. By the time the light reaches our eyes, only colours such as red or orange are visible.

Why is blue light scattered?

The shorter the wavelength, the more it is scattered.
Blue light is scattered because the shorter the wavelength, the more it is spread out by the atmosphere. Also, because aerosols are so small, they don't affect longer wavelengths as easily.

Different sunset colours

Are a result of the concentration and size of aerosols.
There can be other colours of sunsets because of the different concentrations and sizes of aerosols in the atmosphere.

White/yellow sunsets are due to reduced scattering from a small amount of aerosols, so the wavelengths reach our eyes with equal intensities.

Purple skies after sunsets are because of how the red light from sunsets combine with the scattered blue light to create purple hues.
Photo by Ennor

Put simply...

To answer my research question in one sentence...
Photo by timo_w2s

Sunsets are
red because blue
light is scattered and
colours with longer
wavelengths are
what we see.

Photo by timo_w2s