What Makes the Colors of the Sunset?
The direction of the sun’s rays when they meet these large and small particles in the air has a great deal to do with the combination of colors that result as these objects absorb part of the rays and throw off others. The sky is the most beautiful blue when the sun is high in the sky. But when the sun is setting the light has a greater distance to travel through the belt of air which surrounds the earth than when it is high up over our heads. You know that if you stick a pin straight down into an orange it won’t go in very far before it is clear through the peel, but if you stick the pin into an orange along the edge it will go through a great deal more of the peel than the other way. That is the way it is with the sunset colors. The peel of the orange is a good representation of the belt of air which surrounds the earth. At sunset the light instead of coming straight down through the belt of air, thus meeting the eye through the shortest possible amount of air, strikes the air on a slant, and, therefore, travels through a great deal more air and closer to the earth to reach it, with the results that it meets a great many more of these little specks, besides all the smoke and other things that hang in the air near the ground, and we thus get many more colors, because some of the things in the air absorb some of the rays and others absorb very different rays when the light comes in this slanting way, and that is what makes the different colors in the sunset. For this reason sunsets are often richer and more beautiful in color when the air is not so pure, but has much dirt and other matter floating about in it.