Why isn’t the sky black?
We see the sky as colored because our atmosphere interacts with the sunlight passing through it. This phenomenon is called “scattering.” The type of scattering responsible for blue sky is known as Rayleigh scattering. Because this effect becomes sharply more pronounced as the energy of light increases, wavelengths at the blue end of the spectrum, where energy is the highest, are scattered preferentially. The sunlight reaching our eyes has a high ratio of short, bluish wavelengths compared to medium and long wavelengths, so we perceive the sky as being blue. Without an atmosphere the sky appears black, as evidenced by the lunar sky in pictures taken from the moon. But even a black sky has some lightness. At night, the sky always has a faint color, called “skyglow” by astronomers. Much of this skyglow is light pollution – sources of light prevalent in urban areas that reduce our ability to see stars, planets, and other celestial phenomena. In the absence of light from human sources, skyg
