🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <616@highett.mel.dbce.csiro.au>, steveo@mel.dbce.csiro.au (Stephen Oakes) writes:
> Why does the sky appear blue?  I have heard that it is because water
> particles (or perhaps "air particles") have a slightly bluish tinge.
> More importantly, if it were not so, what would we see when we look
> skywards?
> 
> --
> | Stephen Oakes      CSIRO Division of Building, Construction and Engineering |
> |                    Post Office Box 56, Highett, Victoria, Australia   3190  |
> | Internet: steveo@mel.dbce.csiro.au  Tel: +61 3 252 6000 Fax: +61 3 252 6249 |
> |_____________________________________________________________________________|
Sunlight entering the atmosphere encounters many small particles, which scatter
the light.  When these particles are small in relation to the wavelength of the
light, a condition known as Rayleigh scattering occurs, and the scattering is
inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wvelength of the light.
This means that short wavelengths are scattered more than long wavelengths.
The scattered short wavelength light gives the sky its blue color.  Long
wavelength light is not scattered as much, and most of it is transmitted
directly through the atmosphere to the observer, making direct sunlight
appear yellow.