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Why Is the Sky Blue? Explore some more!

The Short Answer:

Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in

all directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue
light is scattered more than the other colors because it
travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a
blue sky most of the time.
How do hurricanes form?

(/hurricanes)

How does GPS work?

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Click above to watch this video about why the sky is blue! Voiceover provided by
NASA scientist Dr. Moogega Stricker. Click here to download this video
(1920x1080, 87 MB, video/mp4). (/review/blue-sky/why-is-the-sky-
blue_1920x1080.mp4)

It's easy to see that the sky is blue. Have you ever
wondered why?
A lot of other smart people have, too. And it took a long time to
What is a solar eclipse?
figure it out!

(/eclipses)
The light from the Sun looks white. But it is really made up of all
the colors of the rainbow.

When white light shines through a prism, the light is separated

into all its colors. A prism is a specially shaped crystal.
If you visited The Land of the Magic Windows (/magic-
windows/en/), you learned that the light you see is just one tiny
bit of all the kinds of light energy beaming around the universe--
and around you!
Like energy passing through the ocean, light energy travels in
waves, too. Some light travels in short, "choppy" waves. Other
light travels in long, lazy waves. Blue light waves are shorter than
red light waves.
All light travels in a straight line unless something gets in the way
and does one of these things:—
reflect it (like a mirror)
bend it (like a prism)
or scatter it (like molecules of the gases in the atmosphere)

Sunlight reaches Earth's atmosphere and is scattered in all

directions by all the gases and particles in the air. Blue light is
scattered in all directions by the tiny molecules of air in Earth's
atmosphere. Blue is scattered more than other colors because it
travels as shorter, smaller waves. This is why we see a blue sky
most of the time.

Closer to the horizon, the sky fades to a lighter blue or white. The
sunlight reaching us from low in the sky has passed through
even more air than the sunlight reaching us from overhead. As
the sunlight has passed through all this air, the air molecules
have scattered and rescattered the blue light many times in
many directions.

Also, the surface of Earth has reflected and scattered the light.
All this scattering mixes the colors together again so we see
more white and less blue.

What makes a red sunset?

As the Sun gets lower in the sky, its light is passing through more
of the atmosphere to reach you. Even more of the blue light is
scattered, allowing the reds and yellows to pass straight through
to your eyes.

Sometimes the whole western sky seems to glow. The sky appears red because
small particles of dust, pollution, or other aerosols also scatter blue light, leaving
more purely red and yellow light to go through the atmosphere.
Is the sky blue on other planets, too?
It all depends on what’s in the atmosphere! For example, Mars
has a very thin atmosphere made mostly of carbon dioxide and
filled with fine dust particles. These fine particles scatter light
differently than the gases and particles in Earth’s atmosphere.
Photos from NASA’s rovers and landers on Mars have shown us
that at sunset there is actually the opposite of what you’d
experience on Earth. During the daytime, the Martian sky takes
on an orange or reddish color. But as the Sun sets, the sky
around the Sun begins to take on a blue-gray tone.

The top image shows the orange-colored Martian sky during the daytime and the
bottom image shows the blue-tinted sky at sunset. Both images were captured by
NASA’s Mars Pathfinder Lander. Credit: NASA/JPL

Related Resources for Educators

Our World: Sunsets and Atmospheres
(https://nasaeclips.arc.nasa.gov/video/ourworld/our-world-
sunsets-and-atmosphere)

article last updated August 29, 2022

 If you liked this, you may like:

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What Is a Solar Eclipse? How Does GPS Work? What Is an Aurora?
(/eclipse-snap) (/gps-pizza) (/aurora)

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Last Updated: January 2nd, 2025