Why Is the Sky Blue?

The Short Answer:

Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all
the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered more than the other
colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue
sky most of the time.

Watch this video about why the sky is blue! Voiceover provided by NASA scientist Dr. Moogega Stricker.

It's easy to see that the sky is blue. Have you ever wondered
why?

A lot of other smart people have, too. And it took a long time to figure it out!

The light from the Sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colors of
the rainbow.
When white light shines through a prism, the light is separated into all its
colors. A prism is a specially shaped crystal.
If you visited The Land of the Magic Windows, you learned that the light you
see is just one tiny bit of all the kinds of light energy beaming around the
universe--and around you!
Like energy passing through the ocean, light energy travels in waves, too.
Some light travels in short, "choppy" waves. Other light travels in long, lazy
waves. Blue light waves are shorter than red light waves.

All light travels in a straight line unless something gets in the way and does
one of these things:—
 reflect it (like a mirror)
 bend it (like a prism)
 or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere)

Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all directions by all

the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is scattered in all directions by the
tiny molecules of air in Earth's atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other
colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue
sky most of the time.

Closer to the horizon, the sky fades to a lighter blue or white. The sunlight
reaching us from low in the sky has passed through even more air than the
sunlight reaching us from overhead. As the sunlight has passed through all
this air, the air molecules have scattered and rescattered the blue light many
times in many directions.
Also, the surface of Earth has reflected and scattered the light. All this
scattering mixes the colors together again so we see more white and less
blue.

What makes a red sunset?

As the Sun gets lower in the sky, its light is passing through more of the
atmosphere to reach you. Even more of the blue light is scattered, allowing
the reds and yellows to pass straight through to your eyes.
Is the sky blue on other planets, too?

It all depends on what’s in the atmosphere! For example, Mars has a very thin
atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide and filled with fine dust particles.
These fine particles scatter light differently than the gases and particles in
Earth’s atmosphere.
Photos from NASA’s rovers and landers on Mars have shown us that at
sunset there is actually the opposite of what you’d experience on Earth.
During the daytime, the Martian sky takes on an orange or reddish color. But
as the Sun sets, the sky around the Sun begins to take on a blue-gray tone.

The top image shows the orange-colored Martian sky during the daytime and the bottom image shows
the blue-tinted sky at sunset. Both images were captured by NASA’s Mars Pathfinder Lander. Credit:
NASA/JPL
 Why Is the Sky Blue?
The Short Answer:
Gases and particles in Earth's atmosphere scatter sunlight in all directions. Blue light is scattered
more than other colors because it travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky
most of the time.
Like most curious people, you have probably asked at some time, “Why is the sky blue?” Or if
you saw a beautiful sunset or sunrise, you might have asked, “Why is the sky red?”

It’s so obvious that the sky is blue, you might think the reasons would be just as obvious. They
aren’t! Of all the colors of the rainbow, why blue?

Couldn’t the sky just as easily be green? Or yellow? When we see a rainbow, we do see green
and yellow in the sky, as well as blue, violet, orange, yellow, red, and everything in between.

The white light coming from the Sun is really made up of all the colors of the rainbow. We see
all those colors when we look at rainbows. Raindrops act as tiny prisms when lit by the Sun,
bending light and separating it into its different colors.

But why are there different colors? The light you see is just one tiny bit of all the kinds of light
energy beaming around the Universe - and around you! Like energy passing through the ocean,
light energy travels in waves, too. What makes one kind of light different from others is its
wavelength - or range of wavelengths. Visible light includes the wavelengths our eyes can see.
The longest wavelengths we can see look red to us. The shortest wavelengths we can see look
blue or violet.
 The wavelengths in this picture are not to scale. A red light wave is about 750 nanometers, while
a blue or violet wave is about 400 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter. A human
hair is about 50,000 nanometers thick! So these visible light wavelengths are very, very tiny.

Another important thing to know about light is that it travels in a straight line unless something
gets in the way to

 reflect it (like a mirror)

 bend it (like a prism)
 or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere)

As the white light from the Sun enters Earth’s atmosphere, much of the red, yellow, and green
wavelengths of light (mixed together and still nearly white) pass straight through the atmosphere
to our eyes. The blue and violet waves, however, are just the right size to hit and bounce off of
the molecules of gas in the atmosphere. This causes the blue and violet waves to be separated
from the rest of the light and become scattered in every direction for all to see. The other
wavelengths stick together as a group, and therefore remain white.
So what happens to all the “non-blue” wavelengths? They are still mixed together, unscattered
by the atmosphere, so they still appear white. The scattered violet and blue light dominates the
sky, making it appear blue. What happens to the violet? Some of the violet light is absorbed by
the upper atmosphere. Also, our eyes are not as sensitive to violet as they are to blue.

Closer to the horizon, the sky fades to a lighter blue or white. The sunlight reaching us from the
horizon has passed through even more air than the sunlight reaching us from overhead. The
molecules of gas have rescattered the blue light in so many directions so many times that less
blue light reaches us.
What Makes a Sunset red?
Credit: USGS

As the Sun gets lower in the sky, its light passes through more of the atmosphere to reach you.
Even more of the blue and violet light is scattered, allowing the reds and yellows to pass straight
through to your eyes without all that competition from the blues.

Also, larger particles of dust, pollution, and water vapor in the atmosphere reflect and scatter
more of the reds and yellows, sometimes making the whole western sky glow red.
Why Does Scattering Matter?
How much of the Sun’s light gets bounced around in Earth’s atmosphere and how much gets
reflected back into space? How much light gets soaked up by land and water, asphalt freeways
and sunburned surfers? How much light do water and clouds reflect back into space? And why
do we care?
Sunlight carries the energy that heats Earth and powers all life on Earth. Our climate is affected
by how sunlight is scattered, reflected back to space, or absorbed by forests, deserts, snow-
and ice-covered surfaces, different types of clouds, smoke from forest fires, and other pollutants
in the air.

Just as Earth's atmosphere bends and scatters light that passes through it from the Sun to the
surface, the atmosphere affects light reflecting off the surface back into space.

That is why satellites can perform what is called remote sensing from space and reveal a great
deal about the surface and about the atmosphere. Instruments on satellites such as the GOES

pictured above, can measure the intensity of light of different wavelengths. Analyzing that
information, atmospheric scientists find out surface and atmospheric temperatures, levels of
carbon dioxide, water vapor, pollutants, ozone, and other trace gases.

GOES takes good advantage of our atmosphere's affect on light to help us forecast the weather
and understand and take care of our planet.
The next generation of GOES satellites, called the GOES-R series, will have even better
imaging capabilities. The GOES-R series of weather satellites are developed
by NOAA and NASA. The first satellite in the series,

GOES-16, launched in 2016.