What Causes the ‘Color’ of the Sky at Sunrise and Sunset?

The sky changes color at sunrise and sunset because light travels through more air when the sun is near the horizon.

Imagine you're shining a flashlight through a glass of water. When the light goes straight through, it’s bright and white. But if you tilt the glass so the light has to go through more water, it starts to look colored, maybe red or orange. That's what happens with sunlight.

Sunlight is like a rainbow all mixed up, it has red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet in it. But when the sun is high in the sky, all those colors go straight through the air, so we see white light.

At sunrise or sunset, the sunlight has to travel through more of Earth's atmosphere. The blue and violet parts get scattered away by tiny particles in the air, like a game of tag! That leaves behind the red and orange, which are bigger and don’t scatter as much. So we see those colors in the sky.

It’s like magic, the sky becomes a canvas, painting the world with warm colors every morning and evening.