Where Do Babies Come From What Color the Sky

This is an article from Curious Kids, a series for children. The Conversation is asking kids to send in questions they'd like an expert to reply. All questions are welcome – serious, weird or wacky!


Why is the sky bluish and where does it start? – Oliver Scott, historic period 7, Wombarra.

This is something that parents become asked every day. And it's a great question, Oliver!

Some people think the sky is blue considering of sunlight reflected off the ocean and back into the heaven. But the heaven is blue even in the middle of the countryside, nowhere most the sea!

Others remember it'south because of the water in our temper. But the sky is bluish in places that are extremely dry, similar the desert.

A bluish sky over the Sahara desert in Libya. Wikipedia

So what's the real reason?

The sky is blue considering of the manner sunlight interacts with our atmosphere.

If you've ever played with a prism or seen a rainbow, then you lot know lite is made up of different colours. The proper noun "ROY One thousand. BIV" helps united states of america remember these colours: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.

A rainbow over my house in suburban Melbourne, 2017. Duane Hamacher

These colours make up merely a tiny portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, which includes ultraviolet waves, microwaves, and radio waves. This ways the invisible waves that cause sunburns, let us to rut-up our leftovers, and let us listen to the radio are all forms of light.

The spectrum of low-cal, showing the wavelength with objects of comparable size. NASA

Light moves as waves of different lengths: some are brusk, making bluer light, and some are long, making redder light. As sunlight reaches our atmosphere, molecules in the air besprinkle the bluer light but let the red light laissez passer through. Scientists call this Rayleigh scattering.

The spectrum of light we can see. Each colour from carmine to blue looks has a shorter distance between the waves. NASA

When the Dominicus is loftier in the sky, it appears its truthful colour: white. At sunrise and sunset, nosotros see a much redder sun. This is because the sunlight is passing through a thicker layer of our temper. This scatters the blue and green light along the style, allowing the redder low-cal to pass through and illuminate the clouds in a beautiful array of ruby-red, orange, and pink.

Cherry-red sunlight illuminating the clouds at sunset outside Melbourne during the 2017 winter solstice. Duane Hamacher

Rayleigh handful tin affect how we see the Moon. When the Moon passes through the shadow of the Earth during a total lunar eclipse, blue and dark-green light is scattered in the Earth's atmosphere, letting ruby-red light pass through. Our temper acts a similar a magnifying glass, refracting (bending) the red sunlight onto the Moon. This can give it an eerie dark red hue.

For this reason, many cultures - including some Australian Aboriginal groups - associate lunar eclipses with claret.

The dark red colour of the Moon during a full lunar eclipse on 15 May 2003. Frank Schulenburg/Flickr, CC Past-SA

Rayleigh scattering works on other planets, too. Did you know that the heaven on Mars is also blue? (When at that place are no big storms kicking crimson dust into the air, that is!)

A photo of the Martian sky from the Viking spacecraft on August 29, 1976. NASA/JPL.

And finally, where does the heaven offset?

This is a tricky question. A bird flying 50 meters above u.s. looks like it's in the sky. Only and then do aeroplanes, and they fly more than 10,000 metres overhead.

"The sky" is just our atmosphere as we see it from underneath. A bulk of our atmosphere extends virtually 16 km up, and this is where nearly of the Rayleigh scattering happens.

If you've ever seen video of a rocket going into space, you tin see the blue sky fade abroad to a black groundwork every bit information technology climbs above the atmosphere.

Sentinel a space shuttle launch. You lot tin come across the skies turn from blueish to black as the shuttle moves above the Earth's temper.

Hello, curious kids! Have y'all got a question you'd similar an skilful to respond? Ask an adult to send your question to us. You can:

* Email your question to curiouskids@theconversation.edu.au
* Tell u.s. on Twitter by tagging @ConversationEDU with the hashtag #curiouskids, or
* Tell us on Facebook

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Delight tell usa your name, age and which city you live in. Yous tin ship an sound recording of your question too, if you want. Send every bit many questions as y'all like! We won't exist able to answer every question but nosotros volition do our all-time.

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Source: https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-is-the-sky-blue-and-where-does-it-start-81165

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