Why is the color of the sunset red?

Answer 1

At sunrise or sunset, a longer part of the the sunlight path passes through the atmosphere, and the atmosphere diffuses (or spreads out) blue light more than red light. (This is also the reason why the sky is blue.)

Answer 2

It is caused by light being scattered by dust particles in the air. That is why they tend to be more spectacular in hot dry, dusty weather or after there has been a particularly violent volcanic eruption somewhere in the world that puts ash VERY high into the atmosphere.
Sunsets often have a red or orange color to them. Why is this? Sunlight (what we call "white light") is made up of all different colors of light, each having a different wavelength. During a sunset, more red light is scattered toward you because ofaerosols in the lower atmosphere, compared to the amount of blue or green light that is scattered.

(Light scattering by different amounts for different wavelengths also explains the color of almost anything: green grass scatters more green light than all other colors of light.)

So why isn't the sky red when the sun is overhead? Because at sunset (or sunrise) sunlight is passing through a much longer path of the lower atmosphere, which is where most of the aerosols are concentrated. So, the scattering effect of the aerosols is magnified, causing more red light to be scattered than other colors of light.
Red light has higher frequency than other colours of light. during sunset sun is far away

from the earth and light waves of lower frequencies scattered in space.

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I deleted this answer when I first saw it. But then I saw the light, repented,

and remembered that it's better to light one little candle than to curse the

darkness. So I restored the answer, and decided to just add a few footnotes,

to tighten it up a bit:

-- Red light does not have higher frequency than other colours of light. In fact,

of all the colours of visible light, the frequency of red light is the lowest.

-- While it may be true that the sun is far away from Earth at sunset, that's only

because the sun is ALWAYS far away from Earth. That distance doesn't change

during the day. In fact, at every instant around the clock, it's ALWAYS sunset

somewhere on Earth.

-- Light waves are not scattered in space, no matter what their frequency is.

Otherwise, it's a fine answer.

As 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.The sky around the setting sun may take on many colors. The most spectacular shows occur when the air contains many small particles of dust or water. These particles reflect light in all directions. Then, as some of the light heads towards you, different amounts of the shorter wavelength colors are scattered out. You see the longer wavelengths, and the sky appears red, pink or orange.
Light from the setting sun is coming through a thicker layer of atmosphere than it does at noon. This tends to filter out the shorter, blue wavelengths of light.

Answer 3

The color of the sunset is a result of the human eye viewing the sun through more and more ozone; as the sun approaches the horizon, there is more ozone through which you are looking. It is the same reason that the moon looks larger or more red when it is close to the horizon.

Answer 4

During sun set the rays coming from sun having different colours have to go across through lenghty atomosphere before reaching the observer. During that passage the shorter wavelength violet to green get scattered more and only longer wavelength red are able to reach safely the observer's eyes. So setting as well as rising sun appears RED.

Answer 5

Rayleigh scattering occurs when light scatters off of small particles in the atmosphere. Rayleigh scattering is isotropic and favours shorter wavelengths which means that blue light is more likely to scatter than red light and, when it does scatter, it scatters in all directions nearly equally.

During the day, this allows us to see mostly the blue wavelengths which scatter off of particles in the atmosphere and into our eyes while the red wavelengths pass by over head.

However, when the sun is setting, the light must travel through more atmosphere and so the blue wavelengths are scattered much earlier on, away from our sight, while the red wavelengths are left to propagate through the atmosphere and into our eyes.

It is because of the relative amounts of each wavelength that we perceive blue or red sky as visible light is always a mixture of all "colours".

Answer 6

Sunsets are red because the sun is at a lower tilt and the electromagnetic waves have more atmosphere to travel through before it gets to you eyes so it has a longer wavelength, making it appear a...

Answer 7

During the middle of the day, the sunlight strikes the surface of the earth at close to right angles and so travels through a minimum amount of the atmosphere. At sunset, though, sunlight travels through a much larger amount of the atmosphere. The earth's atmosphere absorbs blue light and so what is left looks much redder.

Answer 8

Sunlight is made up of different colors of light. Each color has a different wavelength. Aerosols scatters red or orange light towards you in the lower atmosphere.

Answer 9

Refer to WikiAnswer

= Why is sunset red? = http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_is_sunset_red&updated=1&waNoAnsSet=2