How Sunsets Work? The sunset is a clichéd standard of beauty and as such I’m going to dissect it, WITH SCIENCE! The basic principle behind sunsets is Rayleigh scattering, the same phenomena that causes the sky to be blue. During a sunset the path length of the light emitted by the sun to the observer is longer which exacerbates the effects of this scattering. Rayleigh scatting is the scattering of light by particles smaller than the light’s wavelength such as atoms or molecules (this is why the sunset on Mars looks different) and as a general rule smaller wavelengths of light are scattered more than longer wavelengths. This serves to remove all the short wavelengths (blue and green) from the light we see during a sunset to just leave the longer wavelengths (reds and oranges).Another phenomena known as a green flash (in which there is a flash of green duh) can also sometimes be seen at sunset. This is caused by high frequency/short wavelength light, such as blue or green, being refracted more in the atmosphere than longer wavelengths. As the sun goes down this causes green light to bend along the Earth’s curvature to arrive at the observer as a flash.
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How Sunsets Work?


The sunset is a clichéd standard of beauty and as such I’m going to dissect it, WITH SCIENCE! The basic principle behind sunsets is Rayleigh scattering, the same phenomena that causes the sky to be blue. During a sunset the path length of the light emitted by the sun to the observer is longer which exacerbates the effects of this scattering. Rayleigh scatting is the scattering of light by particles smaller than the light’s wavelength such as atoms or molecules (this is why the sunset on Mars looks different) and as a general rule smaller wavelengths of light are scattered more than longer wavelengths. This serves to remove all the short wavelengths (blue and green) from the light we see during a sunset to just leave the longer wavelengths (reds and oranges).

Another phenomena known as a green flash (in which there is a flash of green duh) can also sometimes be seen at sunset. This is caused by high frequency/short wavelength light, such as blue or green, being refracted more in the atmosphere than longer wavelengths. As the sun goes down this causes green light to bend along the Earth’s curvature to arrive at the observer as a flash.

Source: 14-billion-years-later

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    Naw dawg, the green flash is a soul returning from another world. I saw it on Pirates.
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  12. This was featured in #Science
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