-
Asked by ckl97 to Amelia, Jim, Liz, Prateek, Richard on 22 Jun 2011.
-
Jim Caryl answered on 21 Jun 2011:
Actually they do see blue sky too; many of the images of the earth are processed to remove the glare of the blue sky, so we can better see what is underneath it.
Take a look at this image taken from the Space Shuttle…
I can see some blue sky 😉
Also, at night we do see black, because it is the refraction of the sunlight through the atmosphere that creates the blue colour – a product of the numerous gasses, water vapour, dust and other components floating around in our atmosphere. So once the sunlight has gone, we see space!
-
-
Amelia Markey answered on 22 Jun 2011:
The thing with this is you have to think about why we see things as coloured. Objects absorb and reflect light of different wavelengths and the wavelengths of light represent different colours. So if I’m looking at a red book I see it as red because light of all wavelengths hits the book and is absorbed by the material of the book except light of a “red” wavelength which is reflected back into my eye. Things that look white reflect all wavelengths of light so appear white and things that absorb all wavelengths look black.
So thinking about why the sky looks blue…. This is because the light that passes from the Sun down to us on earth has to pass through all the gases in the atmosphere. These gases absorb a lot of the light from the Sun but the “blue” wavelength light is scattered by the atmosphere so you can see it!
This link explains it really simply. It also gives you a lot of info on light and the atmosphere in general. At the bottom are a few experiments you can try out ! 🙂
Comments