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Crepuscular rays usually appear orange because the path through the atmosphere at dawn and dusk passes through up to 40 times as much air as rays from a high Sun at noon. Particles in the air scatter short-wavelength light (blue and green) through Rayleigh scattering much more strongly than longer-wavelength yellow and red light.
Particles in the air scatter short wavelength light (blue and green) through Rayleigh scattering much more strongly than longer wavelength yellow and red light. Loosely, the term "crepuscular rays" is sometimes extended to the general phenomenon of rays of sunlight that appear to converge at a point in the sky, irrespective of time of day. [5] [6]
Other colors occur naturally in clouds. Bluish-grey is the result of light scattering within the cloud. In the visible spectrum, blue and green are at the short end of light's visible wavelengths, while red and yellow are at the long end. [20] The short rays are more easily scattered by water droplets, and the long rays are more likely to be ...
Diagram showing displacement of the Sun's image at sunrise and sunset Comparison of inferior and superior mirages due to differing air refractive indices, n. Atmospheric refraction is the deviation of light or other electromagnetic wave from a straight line as it passes through the atmosphere due to the variation in air density as a function of height. [1]
Common optical phenomena are often due to the interaction of light from the Sun or Moon with the atmosphere, clouds, water, dust, and other particulates. One common example is the rainbow , when light from the Sun is reflected and refracted by water droplets.
The scattering of direct sunlight on those clouds results in the same polarization pattern. In other words, the proportion of the sky that follows the Rayleigh Sky Model is high for both clear skies and cloudy skies. The pattern is also clearly visible in small visible patches of sky. The celestial angle of polarization is unaffected by clouds.
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Geometrical optics, or ray optics, is a model of optics that describes light propagation in terms of rays. The ray in geometrical optics is an abstraction useful for approximating the paths along which light propagates under certain circumstances. The simplifying assumptions of geometrical optics include that light rays: