• Question: Why is the sky blue?

    Asked by maeveb1 to Sheila, Piyush, Natalia, Gary, Dimitar on 3 Nov 2018. This question was also asked by 947smap48.
    • Photo: Sheila Castilho

      Sheila Castilho answered on 3 Nov 2018:

      Humm that’s not really my area but as I good researcher I went to search a good answer for you, so I got:

      According to Nasa’s explanation, the light from the sun looks white. But it is really made up of all the colours of the rainbow. This was demonstrated by Isaac Newton, who used a prism to separate the different colours and so form a spectrum. The three different types of colour receptors in the retina of the human eye respond most strongly to red, green and blue wavelengths, giving us our colour vision.

      So, the sky during day time is blue because molecules in the air scatter blue light from the sun more than they scatter red light. When we look towards the sun at sunset, we see red and orange colours because the blue light has been scattered out and away from the line of sight.

      If you want to research more about it, you can use this link (https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/blue-sky/en/), it is a great easy explanation for kids! maybe it’ll motivate you be an astronaut! =0

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