Why does the sun appear red during sunrise and sunset?
You must have always noticed that when the sun rises in the morning and is about to set in the evening, it appears as a red sphere. And the color of the sky around it also becomes reddish.
This scene is very beautiful and romantic. At such times, the sky also seems to be changing colours rapidly. Amidst the rapid change of colours, the sun appears to be constantly red. The reason for this is completely scientific.
The answer lies in Rayleigh scattering. This was explained by British physicist Lord Rayleigh about a hundred years ago. He was the first person to explain the phenomenon of scattering of light.
"This is related to the scattering of sunlight. But it is not scattered uniformly," says Bloomer. Each color has its own wavelength, which makes it appear the way it is. For example, violet has the shortest wavelength, while red has the longest.
As the sunlight passes through different layers of air, these layers contain gases of different densities. As it passes through these, the light changes direction and also gets divided. There are also some particles in the atmosphere, which bounce or reflect the divided light.
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