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Asked by kasvina to Chris, Hayley, Jimi, Omur on 16 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by syra kate, bluebestie021.
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Chris Conselice answered on 16 Mar 2016:
In space it is actually dark – black, but as you go up in the atmosphere, it does get a bit dark bluer.
The reason it is blue is that you are seeing sunlight which is reflecting off atoms and molecules in the atmosphere. When light gets reflected or scattered like this, only the blue light remains.
It gets darker above because it is getting fainter – less atmosphere, so less to scatter the light and thus less light is there to see – so it appears darker blue, but it is actually just some blue with a lot of black from nothing.
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Hayley Moulding answered on 16 Mar 2016:
The blueness comes from the light reflecting off molecules and scatters the blue light. Isn’t that cool..
Chris knows more about the space bit 🙂
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Jimi Wills answered on 16 Mar 2016:
space is black because there’s no light. Light from the stars goes straight from the star to your eye.
but when the light has to pass through a gas, it hits the gas molecules and atoms and bends… or some of it even gets absorbed. But this means the light can change direction. So the light from the stars (including the sun) can come to your eye via the gases in the earth’s atmosphere. That’s twhy the atmosphere is lit up.
There are a few reasons it’s blue, but the main one is that blue light has a higher energy that the other colours, and is actually more difficult to scatter or absorb. Things that can bend the light are changes in the density of the gas, droplets, temperature differences, and the gas molecules themselves. So the red and green light gets scattered and absorbed by the atmosphere a lot easier than the blue, so most of the light left over is blue, so the atmosphere looks blue.
Comments
kasvina commented on :
thank you for answering my questions