Ever wondered??? - Eternal Allegiance

Dejonay · 07-19-2002, 10:26 AM

Ok this has always bugged me since i was a kid so im hoping some of y'all will have the answer for me!!
Why when we look up at the sky during the day is it Blue BUT when space people go into space in the day and they get a distance away from the planet its black????
Just wondering!
De
xxxx

midnightman · 07-19-2002, 10:46 AM

The blue sky is the sun's light that is spread out farther away from the sun itself. All that blue is still light from the sun, but just farther out and spread out. It may be due to some of the chemicals in the atmosphere that gives it the color, or the angle at which the rays hit our eyes. At sunset the colors change because of the angle (I think).

In space astronauts no longer have an atmosphere to look through, so the sun's rays don't get spread out as much through air (no air in space) so the sun looks just like any other star, except really bright. Also, that is why stars twinkle on Earth but not in space (no atmosphere for the light to travel through).

Dejonay · 07-19-2002, 12:18 PM

Oooooooooooooooooh thanks for clearing it up for me!!!
De
xxxx

Wdnesday · 07-19-2002, 12:22 PM

Good explaination, MM. The reason it's blue to us is because of the atmosphere. Mars's atmosphere makes the sky red. Mercury has no atmosphere, like the moon, and that planet always sees the black night sky.

Dejonay · 07-19-2002, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Mars's atmosphere makes the sky red

Sooooo if i was to live on mars (impossible i know) the sky would be red??? Freaky!!!
How do y'all know so much?
De
xxxx

John Kylie · 07-19-2002, 12:55 PM

The sun produces white light, which is made up of light of all colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Light is a wave, and each of these colors corresponds to a different frequency, and therefore wavelength, of light. The colors in the rainbow spectrum are arranged according to their frequency... violet, indigo, and blue light have a higher frequency than red, orange, and yellow light.

When the white light from the sun shines through the earth's atmosphere, it collides with gas molecules. These molecules scatter the light.

The shorter the wavelength of light, the more it is scattered by the atmosphere. Because it has a shorter wavelength, blue light is scattered ten times more than red light.

Blue light also has a frequency that is closer to the resonant frequency of atoms than that of red light. If the electrons bound to air molecules are pushed, they will oscillate with a natural frequency that is even higher than the frequency of blue light. Blue light pushes on the electrons with a frequency that is closer to their natural resonant frequency than that of red light. This causes the blue light to be reradiated out in all directions, in a process called scattering. The red light that is not scattered continues on in its original direction. When you look up in the sky, the scattered blue light is the light that you see.

The setting sun looks reddish orange because when the sun is on the horizon, its light takes a longer path through the atmosphere to your eyes than when the sun is directly overhead. By the time the light of the setting sun reaches your eyes, most of the blue light has been scattered out. The light you finally see is reddish orange, the color of white light minus blue.

Violet light has an even shorter wavelength than blue light: It scatters even more than blue light does. So why isn't the sky violet? Because there is just not enough of it. The sun puts out much more blue light than violet light, so most of the scattered light in the sky is blue.

I hope that helped.

Dejonay · 07-19-2002, 12:58 PM

well i certainly gained a lesson in science from that! Thanks John Kylie!
De
xxxx

Wdnesday · 07-19-2002, 01:35 PM

They can terraform Mars and make it liveable for humans, but it will take about 1.000 years, if you are willing to wait that long!!

John Kylie · 07-19-2002, 06:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Wdnesday
They can terraform Mars and make it liveable for humans, but it will take about 1.000 years, if you are willing to wait that long!!

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens to your brain when you talk to yourself. She's suffering with mad cow disease. lol

midnightman · 07-19-2002, 06:25 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by J to the L.O

Sooooo if i was to live on mars (impossible i know) the sky would be red??? Freaky!!!
How do y'all know so much?
De
xxxx

You haven't seen the Viking pictures from the surface of Mars? From the 70s?

Here's one from more recently, from 1997, the Mars Pathfinder... like a little remote controlled car on the surface.

Heh, on Titan (one of Saturn's moons) there's a thick atmosphere and all this tar (supposedly) around. The sky there would be orange, or so I've heard.