at 11pm est in mid-michigan in the southwest sky there was a bright light changing colors & dropping sw what?
357161
Was the object moving extremely fast? If so, it was almost certainly a meteor. The changing colors could have resulted from different chemical elements being burned off.\n\nIf it was moving steadily, then it could have been an artificial satellite. I'd say it was in a very high orbit too because sunlight was still reflecting from it although where you were was in complete darkness. The color changes could have been caused by the reflected light passing through atmospheric layers of varying density and composition.\n\nGod should be spelled B-I-G B-A-N-G\nPBrax@netscape.com
812414
In the morning/evening the sun rays are falling obliquely on to the earth, \nthereby passing through a thicker layer of the atmospheric air because of which (oblique incidence) a lot of its blue component is scattered off \n\nIts 1/lambda^4 scattering - smaller the lambda, larger is the energy scattered off/lost as compared to shorter path transversed during the day time \n\n[This is a standard class XII Physics question]
953737
The answer to part one is "green", and the answer to the second part is "green".\n\nThat is why the sky actually appears blue at noon (blue light is more scattered) and red at sunset (red light is less scattered).
798954
Of course. Look to the notheast after midnight for the next few nights and be patient; depending how dark your sky is you may only see a few an hour.
174660
The sun will rise from west.
666982
Actually a storm came through Fort Worth in about 1995, the sky was about as green as a lilly pad.  We didn't get the severe weather where I lived, but FW got grapefruit sized hail in the park that actually killed several people.  Now that I study and work in weather I know what causes the green discoloration when the light refracts off hailstone in the air it causes a light green light, with more widespread and intense hail you get the darker green
502936
tHERE COMING FOR US BECAUSE OF THE LIGHT ANOMILIES
1153958
You're obviously not looking hard enough!  After it's been raining (not this week) and the sun is coming out again, look at a cloud, a dark one is better than a light one, and you should be able to see how the edge of the cloud appears to be lined with silver
231023
This is caused by thermic convection of the air. In the deserts you normally have high differences in temperature between day and night, so hot air is rising rapidly while cold air is moving downwards after sunset. This different densities in the air makes the light bend and the stars seems as if they are dancing, just as if you were looking through an irregular glass. \nIt's a bad night for astronomers.
661394
it occurs when solar radiation from the sun interacts with the magnetic field around the Earth (its strongest around the poles..so thats why theres a northern..AND southern lights...and no "Middle" lights lol)\n\ni can't wait to see it some day
962965
Here's what happens: imagine you're standing with the Sun at your back looking at a water drop. As a light ray from the Sun hits the drop, it is bent inwards, toward the center of the drop. It bounces off the back of the drop (coming towards you again) and then refracts again on its way out. As a result you see the light ray appearing to come from some point behind the drop, that is, on the opposite side of the sky from the sun (which is where you see rainbows!) \n\n\nBut what about the colors? It turns out that each color of light is bent a little bit differently - red light is bent the least and violet the most. So, each color appears to be coming from a slightly different place behind the water drop. \n\nThe rainbow is circular because only drops located at certain places on the sky (in a circle around the point opposite the Sun) redirect the light exactly back toward your eye. It's only the light from those drops that you see, and hence you see a circle.\n\nanother explaination: This is difficult to envision and to describe, but we'll use some real common sense objects for our model. Picture yourslf standing in front of a tunnel, like you might find under a bridge - a nice even, round, smooth tunnel. Now, if you cast a shadow parallel to the ground, like a shadow from a power line (not the pole, the line - which is parallel to the ground) and let the shadow fall inside the tunnel, you can imagine that the shape of the shadow on the ceiling of the curved tunnel looks as though it is arced, even though the source of the shadow is a straight line. Can you picture that? This is what is happening in the atmosphere. The rainbow is actually a straight line, since light travels in a straight line. Its just that the straight line is falling across a 'fish bowl' like pocket of moist, reflective air, like our tunnel in the model. The rainbow appears, therefore, to be an arc.
414202
(m)\n\nAs the sun begins to set, the light must travel farther through the atmosphere before it gets to you. More of the light is reflected and scattered. As less reaches you directly, the sun appears less bright. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to orange and then to red. This is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered. Only the longer wavelengths are left in the direct beam that reaches your eyes\n\nThe sky around the setting sun may take on many colors. The most spectacular shows occur when the air contains many small particles of dust or water. These particles reflect light in all directions. Then, as some of the light heads towards you, different amounts of the shorter wavelength colors are scattered out. You see the longer wavelengths, and the sky appears red, pink or orange
391923
the northern lights are due to charged particles from the sun interacting with the earths magnetic field, causing the atmeosphere to give of visible light.
87204
Do you mean the green flash?\nIt is there because diffraction of sunlight in the atmosphere.\nAt sunset the thickth of the air layer through whick the sunray travels, is in a maximum.
755768
The atmospheric conditions are affecting the refraction of light & hence it doesn't appear to be blue today.
124314
Actually, this happens only under certain atmospheric conditions, when the air is quite clear. It is because the speed of light in the layers of air near the ground is slower than the speed of light in layers of air above that. Therefore, just like a lens, the light is bent by this gradient in the speed of light. \n\nRefraction of light is a wavelength-dependent phenomenon. The longest wavelengths are bent, or refracted the least. and the shortest wavelengths are bent the most. The reds, yellows and oranges are the long wavelengths, and they will bend the least, and will head off into space. The shorter wavelengths, the blues and greens and violets will be bent down by the atmosphere to be visible at the ground. In fact, the sun is actually below the horizon for the last few minutes of the sunset. The light has to bend around the earth, and the color that gets bent the most includes the short wavelengths. \n\nWhy do we see green in the green flash, and not violet or blue? There is also Rayleigh-Tyndall scattering going on, caused by the small nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the air. The shortest wavelengths are most scattered by the air molecules, and are scattered out of the sunlight, leaving longer wavelengths for us to see. The blues and violets have very short wavelengths, and are therefore scattered the most. (This is the same process that creates blue skies and orange and red suns at sunset). However, in this case, the yellows and reds and oranges are not present in the sunlight as the sun sets below the horizon, but have travelled out into space, so only the greens, blues and violets remain. The blues and violets are scattered away, leaving the green for us to see as a green flash. \n\nA more complete explanation complete with pictures is in the references.\n\nIt is also interesting to note that the moon can also exhibit a green flash, or a green edge (and also a red edge, in a kind of red flash). At the poles, when the sun is barely below the horizon for hours, the green flash can last for hours apparently, according to friends that have seen it.
266082
pink of the evening sky