Name: Beautiful Science - Why does the sky change color at sunset?
Uploaded: 2025-06-18T18:08:53.000Z
Duration: 2 min 12 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

The second conditional

If you were to look up at the sky on a clear day,

you will notice the sun is yellowish and the sky [is] blue.

the color of the sun and the sky can change dramatically

but actually consists of the seven colored waves -

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.

If we were to look at the sun from space, it would always appear white.

But on Earth, the atmosphere scatters some of the light waves coming from it.

and affects what color we perceive the sky and sun as.

The waves at the red end of the spectrum are longer

This means blue waves are more likely to hit particles in the atmosphere and scatter.

Hence why, during the day, we see the sky as blue.

as the combination of the color wavelengths that make it through easier,

like red and green, that combine to make yellow light.

At high noon, the sun may also appear white,

as the white light coming directly from the sun

has the least distance to travel through the atmosphere

in another video you can find in the description below and at the end of this video.

the light has a longer distance to travel through the atmosphere.

that the light does not end up reaching us.

The light in the yellow, orange and red wavelengths

have more chances to scatter on the slightly longer journey

while still making it through to our eyes.

The lower the sunset, the more dominant longer wavelengths will become.

This is why the colors of sunsets get deeper as the sun sets more on the horizon,

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Beautiful Science - Why does the sky change color at sunset?

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