But, unlike the moon, Earth does have an atmosphere. And most of us know that white light — like sunlight — is composed of all the colors of the rainbow. Tiny molecules in our atmosphere cause light to scatter. Think about what happens as the sun sinks lower in the sky. Sunlight encounters more air molecules when the sun is low in the sky than when the sun is overhead. Even more blue light is scattered away, leaving mostly the reddish component of white sunlight to travel the straighter path to your eyes.
During this, most of the shorter wavelengths present in it are scattered away from our line of sight by the molecules of air and other fine particles in the atmosphere. So, the light reaching us directly from the rising Sun consists mainly of longer wavelength red color due to which the Sun appears red.
At sunrise, the sun is near the horizon; hence, sunlight has to travel a longer distance through the atmosphere to reach us. During this journey, most of the blue colour present in sunlight, which is of shorter wavelength, gets scattered from our line of sight. Thus, the red colour present in sunlight, which has a longer wavelength and is scattered the least, reaches our eye.
As we see red light everywhere above, the sun and the surrounding sky appear red at sunrise. Question Papers. Question Papers Textbook Solutions MCQ Online Tests. Hence sun appears reddish at sun rise and sunset. Also I forgot to add, sunrays are made up of 7 colors. The rays have to travel a longer distance in the atmosphere due to which most of the colored rays are scattered. Red rays being the strongest make it through the atmosphere even if it's a long distance in the atmosphere.
That's why the sun appears red at sunset or sunrise.
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