does the sun seem to cast a different brighter light? more of a white light than yellow? if so why..?
414227
You guys got a lot of it, but the sun is actually green. The atmosphere absorbs much of the light to make it more of a yellowish white light. Pollution and the ozone layer trap and absorb the green light that the sun produces. Then you see what you see. (were you looking at the sun??? :)
87052
The orange and red tints that the Sun and Moon sometimes take on are caused by the particles in the Earth's atmosphere. \n\nWhen light (or more specifically, packets of light called photons) from an astronomical object passes through the Earth's atmosphere, it scatters off of particles in the latter. It turns out that these particles like to scatter blue light more than they do red light; so "bluer" photons (those with shorter wavelengths) tend to get scattered, and "redder" photons (those with longer wavelengths) pass through. So, astronomical objects look redder from Earth than they would from space, because the redder wavelengths from the objects penetrate the atmosphere better than the bluer ones. Incidentally, this is why the sky is blue: blue light from the Sun is scattered in all directions on its way to the Earth. \n\nBut how does this explain the occasional redness of the Moon or the Sun? Your son may have noticed that they always occur when the Sun or Moon is close to the horizon. If you think about it, sunlight or moonlight must travel through the maximum amount of atmosphere to get to your eyes when the Sun or Moon is on the horizon (remember that that atmosphere is a sphere around the Earth). So, you expect *more* blue light to be scattered from Sunlight or Moonlight when the Sun or Moon is on the horizon than when it is, say, overhead; this makes the object look redder. In other words, the Sun or Moon tends to look orange or red when it is rising or setting because that's the time when the light has to travel through the most atmosphere to get to you. The effect is exacerbated when there are thin clouds in front or behind the Sun or Moon: the clouds themselves often glow bright pink as well, because they are so good at scattering blue light
170430
I think - not sure just think- the sun is much bigger?!!!!\n\nand it is made of gas, helium! \nandddd it's so hot!
583729
Sunlight is white, just like light bulb light. The moon is illuminated by sunlight just like your newspaper is illuminated by light bulb light when you are reading it at night. Both the Sun and the light bulb are really hot, but you don't touch either one, do you? Now clearly the sun is WAY hotter than a light bulb, but it is also WAY farther away. Both the Moon and Earth are very far from the sun and so they both get about the same amount of heat from the Sun, but we just are not close enough to get red hot.
563373
it all depends....\n\nthe color of the sky depends on the weather...ranging from light blue to dark gray...or black at night\n\nthe color of the grass depends on how dry it is...usually it's varying shades of green but if it's really dry...then baige or brown-ish\n\nthe sun is yellow
134898
I think that the sun that is spoken of isn't that big ball of fire in the sky.
672709
To answer this question, you should know that the white light is made up of seven different colors (violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red). When sunlight (which is white colored) hits the Earth's atmosphere the blue components of the white light bend so much that it seems like they surround the Earth causing the sky to look blue. \nThe seas llok blue because they act like a mirror and they reflect the sky. The sea color is darker than the sky because of the depth of the seas (Beer-Lambert's Law). The rivers are not suppose to be deep and that's why they don't appear blue. If human eyes were really strong then we could have seen that the rivers are slightly blue.
852339
Well, obviously the sun doesn't stop outputting light just because we're cloudy.  We're still getting 1120 W/m^2 through the atmosphere.  It's just being reflected, scattered, or absorbed by clouds, moisture, etc.\n\nSince clouds appear white from space, that says that a big chunk of the sunlight that would otherwise have it the ground winds up sailing off into space.
337135
It is because of the air bending the light slightly. Its the same as shining a light through water, but the effects are less pronounced.
666930
less light makes it to your eye
1127024
sun....its a star btw but there are stars bigger than the sun
193287
well stars are in real more like our sun which gives heat and light, but y they have diff color id coz AS ALL THE STARS ARE NOT AT THE SAME DISTANCE FRM THE EARTH THE LIGHT WHICH TRAVELLS FRM THEM AND REACHES US GIVE THEm COLOR .\n\nLIKE white light has 7 colors in it and each has different wave lenght which means that their light travels on those wave lenghts, and secondly the air in our atmosphere water particles are suspended always and these light passing through them give different wave lenght wch gives us diff color
176083
Maybe the ground temperature is hotter. Its temperature doesn't count on outside factor. The sun is just 1 factor.
217437
Not in the same way that light reflects. This is an important topic in X-Ray telescopes. See below!
321927
The color of the star as we perceive it depends on two factors: the intrinsic color of the star and the sensitivity of the human eye. The star can have all kinds of colors from dull red (the coolest stars) via yellow and green to blue (the hottest stars). However, our eye is evolved in the light of the sun and is most sensitive to yellow.\n\nThe result is that we perceive most stars as white, with a few exceptions. Some stars look red, bluish? For instance in the constellation Orion, Betelgeuse is a bright red star at the top left corner, and Rigel is the bright blue star at the bottom right corner. You may want to use binoculars to see the colors more clearly.
136234
I believe that this effect is due more to the amount of atmosphere the light is travelling through, rather than the angle the light is striking the atmophere, or refractive effects. \n\nThe presence of nitrogen and oxygen molecules, which are much smaller than the wavelength of light, in our atmosphere results in Rayleigh-Tyndall scattering, so that the blue light (short wavelengths, closest in size to the scatterers) are scattered out of the mostly whitish sunlight. When the sun is low in the sky, the light from the sun has to travel through more atmosphere to reach us, so more blue and other short wavelengths are scattered out, leaving progressively more yellow, then orange, and finally red sunlight as the sun is lower in the sky. \n\nSo,\n\nwhen the sun is high in the sky:\n(mostly white sunlight)-(scattered blue light)=(yellowish sunlight)\n\nand as the sun drops lower in the sky:\n(mostly white sunlight)-(even more scattered blue light)=(orange or even red sunlight)\n\nThe sky will also appear orange or red when the sun is low in the sky. This is the reflection of the red or orange sunlight from dust, soot and water droplets in the air. \n\nIf the air is full of soot or dust of the right size (about the same size as the wavelength of light), then one does not see Rayleigh scattering, or Mie Scattering (when the particles are much bigger than the light, creating the white of clouds), but selective scattering, when the red is scattered out, creating effects like a blue moon or sun.\n\nWhy the refraction argument will not work:\n- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -\n\nThe air layers lowest to the earth are associated with the slowest speed of light, and so as the sun is setting, its light is bent down towards the earth. In fact, the image of the setting sun is actually from the sun after it is below the horizon because of this effect (which is responsible for the green flash, and the strange shape of the setting sun, because of refraction effects). Red light is refracted the least, so in fact if the refraction effect was causing the sun to appear a different color at sunset, it would not make the sun red, but of a shorter wavelength color (like green, hence the green flash).
1171568
In our lifetimes it will be purely because of the filtering effects of the atmosphere and clouds. When there is dust, water, chamicals or ice in the atmosphere the colours let through will change, just like putting a coloured scarf over a lamp. \n\nWhen the sun is low in the sky the high frequencies are scattered, allowing more of the red-yellow light to reach us.\n\nAlthough the sun is predicted to change colour and grow, it will be over bilions of years.