What Causes the ‘Color’ of a Sky and Why Does It Change During the Day?

The color of the sky is caused by light bouncing off tiny particles in the air, and it changes because of where the sun is during the day.

Imagine you're playing with a flashlight in a room full of tiny dust particles. When the light goes straight through the room, it looks white or blue, like when the sun is high up in the sky. This is called scattering, and smaller particles scatter blue light more than other colors, that's why the sky looks blue most of the time.

When the sun is low on the horizon, like at sunrise or sunset, the light has to travel through more air. It’s like your flashlight beam going through a longer path with more dust. This makes the blue light get scattered out of our way, and we see the remaining colors, reds, oranges, and pinks, which are why sunrises and sunsets look so magical!

So, the sky is like a big, ever-changing painting made by light and tiny particles, with different colors showing up at different times.