What is the real color of the sky?
966396
AHHHH !!!!A question other than why is the sky blue.  The color of the sky is colorless, clear.  Look at the shots of earth from space (on the night side) you can see earth perfectly, no color enhancement.  Look up at the stars on a clear night, you can see them without any bluish color.\n\nThe sky is only various colors when the sun is shining thru it.
185884
Neither is blue. \n\nThe SKY\nThe 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. \n\nHowever, 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. \n\nThe Sea.\nParticles and solutes can absorb light, as in tea or coffee. Green algae in rivers and streams often lend a blue-green color. The red sea has occasional blooms of red Trichodesmium erythraeum algae. \nParticles in water can scatter light. The Colorado river is often muddy red because of suspended reddish silt in the water. Some mountain lakes and streams with finely gound rock, such as glacial flour, are tourquise. Light scattering by suspended matter is required in order that the blue light produced by water's absorption can return to the surface and be observed. Such scattering can also shift the spectrum of the emerging photons toward the green, a color often seen when water laden with suspended particles is observed. \nThe surface of seas and lakes often reflect blue skylight, making them appear bluer. [[[ Montana reflection.]]] The relative contribution of reflected skylight and the light scattered back from the depths is strongly dependent on observation angle.
771668
It depends on what you mean by "the sky."  Think about it.\n\nWe use the phrase "the sky" as if it were a *thing*, an object that reflects light.   Like saying "the ocean", or "the Grand Canyon."  But we all know that the sky isn't an object.  \n\nInstead, we are looking *through* the atmosphere into space.  As many people point out, the atmosphere scatters short wavelengths of sunlight (blues), giving us the impression that we are seeing blue coming at us from all directions (Rayleigh scattering).  (And BTW, it has nothing to do with reflecting the ocean ... c'mon people ... the sky is still blue in all directions in Montana, far far away from any ocean.)\n\nSo if we think of "the sky" to mean the same thing we think of as the "night sky" ... namely deep space ... then no, the true color of "the sky" is "black" and it is only the intervening atmosphere that is fooling us into thinking we see blue in the daytime.\n\nBut if we think of "the sky" as the atmosphere, then, yes the sky is blue in the day, and completely transparent at night (when there is no sunlight filling the sky with blue).\n\nMyself, I tend to think of "the sky" as the atmosphere ... so I would say yes.\n\nHow's that for an answer?
274364
the sky appears blue becuase that is the color of ozone (O3), the gas that surrounds the earth.
1015359
using simple physics\n\nThe 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.\n\nthe grass is green because the other colors are absorbed and only green is reflected. Grass and most other plants are green because they contain a pigment known as chlorophyll.\n\nSun isn't really yellow. The color yellow is a purely human interpretation of a collection of radiation that hits the retinae of our eyes and gets processed by our visual cortex.
213070
Ocean's colour seems to be blue because it gets the sky's reflection over it.\nAnd the colour of the sky is blue bcuz of the various gases present in the atmosphere\nMainly nitogen and oxygen.
494735
"The sky is blue partly because air scatters short-wavelength light in preference to longer wavelengths. Where the sunlight is nearly tangent to the Earth's surface, the light's path through the atmosphere is so long that much of the blue and even yellow light is scattered out, leaving the sun rays and the clouds it illuminates red, at sunrise and sunset."
929659
reflection of light\n\nDuring daylight the sky has the appearance of a deep blue surface, but this is the result of the air scattering sunlight. [1] There is no "blue object" above the earth in any normal sense, so it is hard to say what object the sky is. The sky is thus sometimes defined as the denser gaseous zone of a planet's atmosphere. At night the sky has the appearance of a black surface or region scattered with stars. But if we then say that the sky is the entire visible universe, it would not be the same thing we see during the day.
71027
first of all, to Paranoid Princess:\n\nwhoa, whoa WHOA.  just a minute.  the sky is not blue because there's liquid oxygen in the upper atmosphere.  that's just retarded and you shouldn't go presenting bizzare mis-truths as fact when they *aren't* fact.\n\nhere is a profile of temperatures at various altitudes:\nhttp://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/images/profile_jpg_image.html\nas you can clearly see the lowest temperature is about -100C.  oxygen liquefies at -182C at normal pressures (reference: http://www.ucc.ie/ucc/depts/chem/dolchem/html/elem/elem008.html ), and even lower temperatures at the low pressures in the upper atmosphere.  PLEASE don't present some bizarre fiction as truth to someone who isn't well-informed enough to know that you're simply fabricating nonsense from thin air.  if you have simply been misled by someone else, at least try to do a marginal amount of research before answering a question on something you don't know much about.\n\nthat said, to the original asker:\n\nthe sky is blue because of a phenomenon called "rayleigh scattering", which occurs because the molecules of air (mostly N2 and O2) happen to be the right size to scatter blue light in all directions.  some of this blue light reaches your eye after being re-scattered again by a second molecule, sometimes all the way across the sky.  \n\nthis is also why the sky turns red at sunset - at low angles, the sunlight has to travel a longer distance through the atmosphere, and by the time it reaches your eye, a lot of the blue light has already been scattered away, leaving yellow orange and red.  (i have yet to hear any explanation of why the sky doesn't turn green between daytime and sunset, though.  still tryin' to figure that one out.)\n\nanyway here are some home/school experiments designed to illustrate rayleigh scattering:\nhttp://www.physics.brown.edu/physics/demopages/Demo/optics/demo/6f4010.htm\nhttp://www.chaosscience.org.uk/dem/public_html/article.php?story=20050222224622239\nhttp://teachers.web.cern.ch/teachers/archiv/HST2002/smallexp/krug/Rayleigh.htm\nhttp://bulldog2.redlands.edu/facultyfolder/deweerd/research/scattering-AJP.pdf\nhttp://www.ktca.org/newtons/9/sky.html\n\nalso, a nice page illustrating rayleigh scattering:\nhttp://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html\nand a slightly more advanced version:\nhttp://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/bluesky.html
804432
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. \n\nHowever, 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. \nOn Earth, the sun appears yellow. If you were out in space, or on the moon, the sun would look white. In space, there is no atmosphere to scatter the sun's light. On Earth, some of the shorter wavelength light (the blues and violets) are removed from the direct rays of the sun by scattering. The remaining colors together appear yellow. \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.
768561
Air scatters different wavelengths of light different amounts.  We normally see the sky as blue because the sky scatters higher wavelengths of light more then lower wavelengths of light.  Blue is a short wavelength while red is a long wavelength.  Anyway, when the sun is rising or setting on the horizon you are looking through much more air to see the sun then say, at noon when the sun is straight over head.  There is so much air that you see the red, instead of the blue, because the blue has long since scattered off while the red is still able to travel through the atmosphere to your eyes.
67486
Colors in the sky occur when dust particles and debris are struck by sunlight rays and that alters their path.\n\nhttp://www.mountainnature.com/Climate/SkyColours.htm
522607
no the sky is no actually blue, have you noticed that at night you can see space? well thats because during the day the sun ray that come through our hemisphere are hitting against the massive amount of Ocean on our Earth, they do not reflect, but instead refract off the water molecules and transmit into the air, shooting all the way back up to our hemisphere, this gives us the sight of a blue sky.
1089706
When transmitted light such as sunlight enters our atmosphere it collides with the oxygen and nitrogen atoms. The color with the shorter wavelength is scattered more by this collision. Because violet and blue are the shortest wavelengths the sky appears to be violet / blue. But because our eyes are more sensitive to blue light than they are violet light, we perceive the sky as blue.\n\nIt is because blue light from the sun strikes the air molecules and scatters and our eyes perceive it as blue.\n\nBlue in sunlight collides with air molecules and our eyes see it as blue.
916826
"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.\n\nHowever, 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. "
844556
Yes! Of course here in the UK it is not always 'blue' below the clouds! \n\nThe reason for the sky being blue is that 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. \n\nHowever, 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. \n\nTo get a fuller explanation (if you can bear it!) see the link below.\n\nGood question!\n\nx
344653
First off why is the sky any color at all and not black?\nThe answer -- the presence of the atmosphere -- oxygen molecules absorb energy and release at pretty much a random angle(Rayleigh scattering). So the light from the sun is "diffused" around the atmosphere and when it reaches our eyes it come in from all directions -- creating the colored sky effect.\n\nNow on to the 2nd question why is the sky specifically blue. Blue is high energy color(it is created by high frequency waves) so it does not spread as much as other colors. In fact the sky is not uniform blue -- Come out of your house on a clear sunny day and you will see that the sky is the bluest directly above your head but it gets more and more white as you look toward horizon. This means that blue light diffuses the least creating blue appearance around the sun -- but as you look further from the sun more colors are visible creating the white effect. \nThe Sky may also be seen in weird colors like red and orange when the sun is at the sharp angle with the atmosphere(dusk and dawn).