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If light sources (e.g. the Moon and light pollution) were removed from the night sky, only direct starlight would be visible. The sky's brightness varies greatly over the day, and the primary cause differs as well. During daytime, when the Sun is above the horizon, the direct scattering of sunlight is the
Sun path, sometimes also called day arc, refers to the daily (sunrise to sunset) and seasonal arc-like path that the Sun appears to follow across the sky as the Earth rotates and orbits the Sun. The Sun's path affects the length of daytime experienced and amount of daylight received along a certain latitude during a given season.
As Earth orbits the Sun over the course of a year, the Sun appears to move with respect to the fixed stars on the celestial sphere, along a circular path called the ecliptic. Earth's rotation about its axis causes diurnal motion, so that the Sun appears to move across the sky in a Sun path that depends on the observer's geographic latitude.
For an observer on the ground, the amount of the arc that is visible depends on the height of the sun above the horizon. It is a full semicircle with an angular radius of 42° when the sun is at the horizon. But as the sun rises in the sky, the arc grows smaller and ceases to be visible when the sun is more than 42° above the horizon.
The video thus begins when the sun is slightly above the horizon and at an azimuth of 120°. The sky is highly polarized in the effective North-Zenith-South plane. This is slightly offset because the sun's azimuth is not due East. The sun moves across the sky with clear circular polarization patterns surrounding it.
Before answering why the sky is purple, here's a quick rundown as to why the sky is blue. The sun emits shortwave radiation on the visible light spectrum, and in a process called Rayleigh ...
The fact that the equatorial Sun is always so close to the zenith at solar noon explains why the tropical zone contains the warmest regions on the planet overall. Additionally, the Equator sees the shortest sunrise or sunset because the Sun's path across the sky is so nearly perpendicular to the horizon. On the equinoxes, the solar disk takes ...
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