Why is the sky blue, and does it look different from space?

The sky looks blue because light from the sun plays a game with tiny particles in Earth’s air.

When sunlight reaches Earth, it's like a rainbow of colors all mixed together, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. But when that light passes through the air, something interesting happens: the tiny molecules in the air scatter the shorter wavelengths more, which are blue and violet. That means blue light bounces around a lot, spreading out all over the sky until it reaches our eyes.

From space, there’s no air to scatter the light, so astronauts see a black sky with a bright white sun and stars, just like we’d see if we could look up through a window in the middle of the night.

It's like looking at paint, when you're close to it, you see all the colors mixed together. But from far away, you only see one color spread out, that’s how the sky looks blue from Earth, and black from space!