SOME Natural

Phenomenon

WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

WHY THE SUN APPEARS RED AT SUNRISE AND SUNSET AND WHITE AT NOON?

WHY DO STARS TWINKLE AND PLANETS DO NOT?

WHY DO STARS APPEAR HIGHER THAN THEY ACTUALLY ARE?

WHY IS SPACE BLACK?

WHY ARE CLOUDS WHITE?

Name : Sahil Pahooja

Class : X-B
Session : 2015-16

Why is the Sky Blue?

The blue color of the sky is due to Rayleigh scattering. As light moves through the
atmosphere, most of the longer wavelengths pass straight through. Little of the
red, orange and yellow light is affected by the air. However, much of the shorter
wavelength light is absorbed by the gas molecules. The absorbed blue light is then
radiated in different directions. It gets scattered all
around the sky. Whichever direction you look,
some of this scattered blue light reaches you.
Since you see the blue light from everywhere
overhead, the sky looks blue.

Colour Of Sun
At the time of sunrise and sunset when the sun is near the horizon, the sunlight has to travel
the greatest distance through the atmosphere to reach us. During this long journey, most of
the shorter wavelength blue colour is scattered and what reaches us directly from setting and
rising sun is actually longer wavelength red colour, due to which sun and its surroundings
appear red.
At noon when the sun is overhead in the
sky then light coming from the sun has to
travel a relatively shorter distance to
reach us. During this short journey, only a
little of blue is scattered .Since light
coming at noon from overhead has
almost all colours in right proportion ,
therefore ,the sun overhead at noon
appears white to us.

Twinkling Stars
When light coming from a star enters the earths atmosphere, it undergoes refraction
due to the varying optical densities at various altitudes. The continuously changing
atmosphere reflects the light from the stars by different amounts from one moment to
another. When more light is refracted toward us the sun appears to be bright, and dim
when less light is refracted, thus leading to twinkling appearance of stars.
On the other hand the planets are quite big (they are
near to us), thus planet can be taken as collection on
point sources of light. The dimming effect produced in
one part are nullified by the brighter effect. Thus on
whole the brightness of a planet remains same and
does not twinkle.

STARS APPEAR HIGHER

Light from a star is refracted as it leaves space and enters the earths atmosphere.
Air higher up in the sky is rarer but it is denser near the surface. Snells law of
refraction tells us that light is refracted towards the medium with higher index of
refraction. Therefore, the light coming from any star that is not situated directly

above the observer takes a curved path

bent down towards the observer, arriving
at the observer at a steeper angle than
had it travelled on a
straight line. Due to this refraction of
light , star appears to be at a higher
position.

Why are clouds white?

In much the same way as why skies are blue, clouds are white because their water droplets
or ice crystals are large enough to scatter the light of the seven wavelengths, which
combine to produce white light. Clouds will appear dark or grey when either they are in
another clouds shadow or the top of a cloud casts a shadow upon its own base.

Why is space black?

If theuniverse is full of stars, why doesn't the light from all of them add up to make the whole sky
bright all the time. Many different explanations have been put forward to resolve this Olbers'
Paradox. The best solution at present is that
The universe is not infinitely old. That means we can only see objects as
far away as the distance light can travel in 15 billion years. The light from
stars farther away than that has not yet had time to reach us and so can't
contribute to making the sky bright.