• Question: why is the sun orange

    Asked by to Dre on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Andrea Cristini

      Andrea Cristini answered on 16 Jun 2014:

      This occurs through a process known as Rayleigh scattering. It is also the reason why the sky is blue!

      Electromagnetic (EM) radiation (or light) from the sun has two components – an electric one and a magnetic one (hence the name – EM radiation). The electric part interacts with particles in the atmosphere (mostly carbon and nitrogen), these particles now have more energy which they would prefer not to have, so they themselves emit radiation. For the setting sun this radiation has a frequency corresponding to orange in the visible part of the EM spectrum.

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