When I was a kid, my dad asked my brother and I to explain why the sky changes colors during sunrise and sunset. We didn’t know the answer back then, but he offered $50 to whichever one of us could write him an essay about it. We never did. Since then, I’ve written many things but never once about why the sky changes colors.
I’m not sure why the task seemed so daunting. I’ve thought to myself, “It can’t be that hard or time-consuming to research the changing colors of the sky in order to find the reason for the sun’s epic magic.” Still, almost two decades have gone by since the day my dad gave us the writing prompt. Maybe I was worried that if I found the answer, the magic would be lost. It just feels so childlike to be ignorant about the science behind it all. Would it still feel the same if I knew?
I stare at the changing sky often. As a photographer, I am ruled by the sun — whether it is or isn’t covered by clouds, where its position is in the sky and when it will set for the day. I spend a lot of time photographing it and being mesmerized by it, wondering how it’s possible that this painted masterpiece happens every morning when the sun meets the sky and every evening when it says goodnight. I’m certainly not the only one.
Many cultures have found sunrise and sunset to be sacred times of the day, regardless of the reason for their magic. Izumo, Japan was thought to be “the faraway place where the sun sinks into the sea, leading to another world.” The dialectal word “banjimashite” is a greeting used for when evening is coming, between “konnichiwa” meaning good day and “konbanwa” meaning good evening. In ancient times, the people of Izumo considered the sunset to be sacred and even prayed to it. Since then, the tradition of celebrating each sunset has been passed down from generation to generation.
Throughout our history as humans, there have been many theories about the sun and its miraculous rising and setting. In ancient mythology, the Greeks believed that Helios, their Sun god, drove his fiery chariot every day from one end of the Earth’s sky to the other, causing the sunrise in the morning and the sunset in the evening. Egyptians believed that Ra, their god of the sun, would travel across the sky in his ship ablaze. At night, he would travel through the underground world of Duat, fighting off monsters while he sailed the River of Darkness. They would celebrate each sunrise, when Ra would emerge from the underworld victorious, beginning a new day.
If you’re a realist, you can thank science for the colors we see in the sky. They come from sunlight that scattered by molecules in the atmosphere. Any gas or aerosol in the air will scatter the sun’s rays into separate wavelengths of light. The more gas that is present, the more light scatters, which also means more colorful light.
Left: A road in Indiana. Canon AE-1 on Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400. Right: Route 85, just north of Ajo, Arizona. Canon AE-1 on Kodak Colorplus 200. Photo by Author.
In Greek mythology, Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, told her father Zeus that she wanted her face to be seen by the entire world all year long, so he turned the sky blue, matching the color of her eyes. To me, it seems so normal and obvious that our sky would be blue. As a child, I used to look up at it and think to myself, “That makes perfect sense.”
According to scientists, sunlight presents as white light, when all of the visible colors are present at once. Sunlight travels as waves of energy. Red has the longest wavelengths while colors like blue and indigo are shorter. The light bounces off the molecules in the air, scattering in all directions. Because blue light has smaller and shorter waves, it scatters more frequently, and thus, the sky appears blue to our eyes.
Ventura, California. Canon AE-1 on Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400. Photo by Author.
When the sun rises and sets, light must travel through more atmosphere than when it is overhead. This results in more scattered light with longer wavelengths, like those of yellow, orange and red. The closer the sun is to the horizon, the more likely you are to see these colors in the sky.
Sometimes, when the atmosphere contains more aerosols, the sky can appear more orange and red. We see this in west during fire season. Certain times of the year can have more aerosols than others. During summer months in certain climates, the air tends to be dustier due to hot and dry conditions. Additionally, in the fall, many farmers harvest their crops which leads to more dust particles suspended in the air. The full moon in September, known as the Harvest Moon, often appears orange for this reason.
The presence of red in the sky can also suggest what the weather is going to be like. Fishermen have an old saying, “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.” I heard this for the first time while visiting home — a town nestled in Northwest Indiana, thirty minutes south of Chicago — one weekend while I was in college. My parents were watching a television show about fishing in Alaska. It was a ninety minute drive back to Purdue, and I spent it watching the sky fade to a deep red, remembering the fishermen’s advice. When a setting sun sends its light through a high concentration of dust particles, the sky can appear red. This can indicate high pressure and stable air coming in from the west, and good weather is likely to follow. A red sky in the morning can mean a high pressure system has already passed through, suggesting a low pressure system — in other words, a storm — may be moving east. It can also indicate a high water content in the atmosphere.
Sunrise and sunset are phenomena that can feel so unreal. The intense colors of these cotton candy skies leave us speechless. It’s mind-blowing to me that there are places without sunrise and sunset. Barrow, Alaska experiences thirty consecutive days without a sunrise in what’s known as the polar night. Norway, known as the Land of the Midnight sun, experiences seventy-six days without a sunset.
For me, both sunrise and sunset are very personal. They are masterpieces just by existing, but they also define each of our days, giving us a beginning and an end. A rising sun signifies a chance to try again. It’s an opportunity to start over and take with you the lessons from yesterday. For most of us, the setting sun means the day is coming to a close. It is the time to close our laptops, clock out and head to wherever we call home. The work is done, and all that’s left to do is sit back and watch the sky go from blue to orange to red.
Dedicated to my father.
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