Why does the sun turn red when it sets. Why the sun is red: mythology, omens. Why the sky is blue

On a clear sunny day, the sky above us looks bright blue. In the evening, the sunset colors the sky in reds, pinks and oranges. Why is the sky blue? What makes a sunset red?

To answer these questions, you need to know what light is and what the Earth's atmosphere consists of.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere is the mixture of gases and other particles that surround the earth. Basically, the atmosphere consists of gaseous nitrogen (78%) and oxygen (21%). Argon gas and water (in the form of steam, droplets and ice crystals) are the next most common in the atmosphere, their concentration does not exceed 0.93% and 0.001%, respectively. The Earth's atmosphere also contains small amounts of other gases, as well as the smallest particles of dust, soot, ash, pollen and salt that enter the atmosphere from the oceans.

The composition of the atmosphere varies within small limits depending on the place, weather, etc. The concentration of water in the atmosphere increases during torrential storms, as well as near the ocean. Volcanoes are capable of throwing huge amounts of ash high into the atmosphere. Technogenic pollution can also add various gases or dust and soot to the usual composition of the atmosphere.

Atmospheric density at low altitude near the Earth's surface is the highest, with increasing altitude it gradually decreases. There is no clear-cut boundary between the atmosphere and space.

light waves

Light is a form of energy that is carried by waves. In addition to light, waves carry other types of energy, for example, a sound wave is an air vibration. A light wave is an oscillation of electric and magnetic fields, this range is called the electromagnetic spectrum.

Electromagnetic waves propagate through airless space at a speed of 299.792 km/s. The speed of propagation of these waves is called the speed of light.

The radiation energy depends on the wavelength and its frequency. The wavelength is the distance between the two nearest peaks (or troughs) of a wave. Wave frequency is the number of wave oscillations per second. The longer the wave, the lower its frequency, and the less energy it carries.

Visible light colors

Visible light is the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes can see. The light emitted by the Sun or an incandescent lamp may appear white, but is actually a mixture of different colors. You can see the different colors of the visible spectrum of light by decomposing it into its components using a prism. This spectrum can also be observed in the sky in the form of a rainbow, which occurs due to the refraction of the light of the Sun in water droplets, acting as one giant prism.

The colors of the spectrum are mixed, continuously moving one into another. At one end of the spectrum is red or orange colors. These colors fade into yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Colors have different wavelengths, different frequencies, and different energies.

Propagation of light in the air

Light travels through space in a straight line as long as there are no obstacles in its path. When a light wave enters the atmosphere, light continues to propagate in a straight line until dust or gas molecules get in its way. In this case, what happens to the light will depend on its wavelength and the size of the particles in its path.

Dust particles and water droplets are much larger than the wavelength of visible light. Light is reflected in different directions when it collides with these large particles. Different colors of visible light are equally reflected by these particles. Reflected light appears white because it still contains the same colors it had before it was reflected.

Gas molecules are smaller than the wavelength of visible light. If a light wave collides with them, then the result of the collision can be different. When light collides with a molecule of any gas, some of it is absorbed. A little later, the molecule begins to emit light in various directions. The color of the emitted light is the same color that was absorbed. But colors of different wavelengths are absorbed differently. All colors can be absorbed, but higher frequencies (blue) are much more absorbed than lower frequencies (red). This process is called Rayleigh scattering, named after the British physicist John Rayleigh, who discovered this scattering phenomenon in the 1870s.

Why is the sky blue?

The sky is blue due to Rayleigh scattering. As light travels through the atmosphere, most of the long wavelengths of the optical spectrum pass through unchanged. Only a small part of the red, orange and yellow colors interact with the air.

However, many shorter wavelengths of light are absorbed by gas molecules. After absorption, the blue color is emitted in all directions. It is scattered all over the sky. Whichever way you look, some of this scattered blue light reaches the observer. Since blue light is visible everywhere overhead, the sky looks blue.

If you look towards the horizon, the sky will have a paler hue. This is a result of the fact that light travels a greater distance in the atmosphere to the observer. The scattered light is again scattered by the atmosphere, and less blue reaches the observer's eye. Therefore, the color of the sky near the horizon appears paler or even appears completely white.

Black sky and white sun

From Earth, the Sun appears yellow. If we were in space or on the Moon, the Sun would appear white to us. There is no atmosphere in space that scatters sunlight. On Earth, part of the short waves sunlight(blue and violet) are absorbed by scattering. The rest of the spectrum looks yellow.

Also, in space, the sky looks dark or black instead of blue. This is the result of the absence of an atmosphere, hence the light does not scatter in any way.

Why is the sunset red?

As the sun goes down, the sunlight has to travel a greater distance in the atmosphere to reach the observer, so more sunlight is reflected and scattered by the atmosphere. Since less direct light reaches the observer, the Sun appears less bright. The color of the Sun also appears to be different, ranging from orange to red. This is due to the fact that even more short-wavelength colors, blue and green, are scattered. Only the long-wavelength components of the optical spectrum remain, which reach the observer's eyes.

The sky around the setting sun can be painted in different colors. The sky is most beautiful when the air contains many small particles of dust or water. These particles reflect light in all directions. In this case, shorter light waves are scattered. The observer sees light rays of longer wavelengths, and so the sky appears red, pink, or orange.

More about the atmosphere

What is atmosphere?

The atmosphere is a mixture of gases and other substances that surround the Earth, in the form of a thin, mostly transparent shell. The atmosphere is held in place by the Earth's gravity. The main components of the atmosphere are nitrogen (78.09%), oxygen (20.95%), argon (0.93%) and carbon dioxide (0.03%). The atmosphere also contains small amounts of water (in different places its concentration ranges from 0% to 4%), solid particles, gases neon, helium, methane, hydrogen, krypton, ozone and xenon. The science that studies the atmosphere is called meteorology.

Life on Earth would not be possible without the presence of an atmosphere that supplies the oxygen we need to breathe. In addition, the atmosphere performs another important function - it equalizes the temperature throughout the planet. If there were no atmosphere, then in some places on the planet there could be sizzling heat, and in other places it would be extremely cold, the temperature range could range from -170 ° C at night to + 120 ° C during the day. The atmosphere also protects us from the harmful radiation of the Sun and space, absorbing and scattering it.

Of the total amount of solar energy reaching the Earth, approximately 30% is reflected by clouds and the earth's surface back into space. The atmosphere absorbs approximately 19% of the Sun's radiation, and only 51% is absorbed by the Earth's surface.

Air has weight, although we do not realize it, and do not feel the pressure of the air column. At sea level, this pressure is one atmosphere, or 760 mmHg (1013 millibars or 101.3 kPa). With increasing height Atmosphere pressure is rapidly declining. The pressure drops by a factor of 10 for every 16 km in altitude. This means that at a pressure of 1 atmosphere at sea level, at an altitude of 16 km, the pressure will be 0.1 atm, and at an altitude of 32 km - 0.01 atm.

The density of the atmosphere in its lowest layers is 1.2 kg/m 3 . Each cubic centimeter of air contains approximately 2.7 * 10 19 molecules. At ground level, each molecule travels at about 1,600 km/h, while colliding with other molecules at a rate of 5 billion times per second.

Air density also drops rapidly with altitude. At a height of 3 km, the air density decreases by 30%. People living near sea level experience temporary breathing problems when raised to this altitude. The highest altitude at which people permanently live is 4 km.

The structure of the atmosphere

The atmosphere consists of different layers, the division into these layers occurs according to their temperature, molecular composition and electrical properties. These layers do not have pronounced boundaries, they change seasonally, and in addition, their parameters change at different latitudes.

Separation of the atmosphere into layers depending on their molecular composition

Homosphere

Lower 100 km including Troposphere, Stratosphere and Mesopause.
Makes up 99% of the mass of the atmosphere.
Molecules are not separated by molecular weight.
The composition is quite homogeneous, with the exception of some small local anomalies. Homogeneity is maintained by constant mixing, turbulence and turbulent diffusion.
Water is one of two components distributed unevenly. When water vapor rises, it cools and condenses, then returning to the earth in the form of precipitation - snow and rain. The stratosphere itself is very dry.
Ozone is another molecule whose distribution is uneven. (Read about the ozone layer in the stratosphere below.)

heterosphere

Extends above the homosphere, includes the Thermosphere and the Exosphere.
The separation of the molecules of this layer is based on their molecular weights. Heavier molecules such as nitrogen and oxygen are concentrated at the bottom of the layer. The lighter ones, helium and hydrogen, dominate in the upper part of the heterosphere.

Separation of the atmosphere into layers depending on their electrical properties.

Neutral atmosphere

Below 100 km.

Ionosphere

Approximately above 100 km.
Contains electrically charged particles (ions) produced by the absorption of ultraviolet light
The degree of ionization changes with altitude.
Different layers reflect long and short radio waves. This allows radio signals propagating in a straight line to bend around spherical surface earth.
Auroras occur in these atmospheric layers.
Magnetosphere is the upper part of the ionosphere, extending to about 70,000 km, this height depends on the intensity of the solar wind. The magnetosphere protects us from the high-energy charged particles of the solar wind by keeping them in the Earth's magnetic field.

Separation of the atmosphere into layers depending on their temperatures

Top border height troposphere depends on seasons and latitude. It extends from the earth's surface to a height of about 16 km at the equator, and to a height of 9 km at the North and South Poles.

The prefix "tropo" means change. The change in the parameters of the troposphere is due to weather conditions- for example, due to the movement of atmospheric fronts.
As the altitude increases, the temperature drops. Warm air rises, then cools and descends back to Earth. This process is called convection, it occurs as a result of the movement of air masses. The winds in this layer blow mainly vertically.
This layer contains more molecules than all the other layers combined.

Stratosphere- extends approximately from a height of 11 km to 50 km.

It has a very thin layer of air.
The prefix "strato" refers to layers or layering.
The lower part of the Stratosphere is quite calm. Jet planes often fly at the bottom of the stratosphere in order to get around bad weather in the Troposphere.
Strong winds known as high-altitude jet streams blow in the upper part of the Stratosphere. They blow horizontally at speeds up to 480 km/h.
The stratosphere contains the "ozone layer" located at an altitude of approximately 12 to 50 km (depending on latitude). Although the concentration of ozone in this layer is only 8 ml/m 3 , it absorbs the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays very effectively, thereby protecting life on earth. The ozone molecule is made up of three oxygen atoms. The oxygen molecules we breathe contain two oxygen atoms.
The stratosphere is very cold, its temperature is about -55°C at the bottom and increases with height. The increase in temperature is due to the absorption of ultraviolet rays by oxygen and ozone.

Mesosphere- extends to altitudes of about 100 km.

As the altitude increases, the temperature rises rapidly.

Thermosphere- extends to altitudes of about 400 km.

With increasing altitude, the temperature rises rapidly due to the absorption of very short wavelength ultraviolet radiation.
Meteors, or "shooting stars", begin to burn up at altitudes of about 110-130 km above the Earth's surface.

Exosphere- extends for hundreds of kilometers beyond the Thermosphere, gradually passing into outer space.

The air density here is so low that the use of the concept of temperature loses all meaning.
Molecules often fly off into space when they collide with each other.

Why is the color of the sky blue?

Visible light is a form of energy that can travel through space. Light from the sun or an incandescent lamp appears white when in reality it is a mixture of all colors. The main colors that make up the white color are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. These colors continuously change into one another, therefore, in addition to the primary colors, there is also a huge number of various shades. All these colors and shades can be observed in the sky in the form of a rainbow that occurs in areas of high humidity.

The air that fills the entire sky is a mixture of minute gas molecules and small solid particles such as dust.

As sunlight passes through the air, it bumps into molecules and dust. When light collides with gas molecules, the light can be reflected in various directions. Some colors, such as red and orange, reach the observer directly by passing directly through the air. But most of the blue light is re-reflected from air molecules in all directions. In this way, blue light is scattered throughout the sky and it appears blue.

When we look up, some of this blue light reaches our eyes from all over the sky. Since everywhere overhead we can see Blue colour then the sky looks blue.

There is no air in outer space. Since there are no obstacles from which light could be reflected, the light propagates directly. The rays of light do not scatter, and the "sky" looks dark and black.

Experiments with light

The first experiment - decomposition of light into a spectrum

For this experiment you will need:

a small mirror, a piece of white paper or cardboard, water;
a large shallow vessel such as a cuvette or bowl, or a plastic ice cream box;
sunny weather and a window facing the sunny side.

How to conduct an experiment:

Fill a cuvette or bowl 2/3 full with water, and place it on the floor or table so that direct sunlight reaches the water. The presence of direct sunlight is essential for the correct conduct of the experiment.
Place a mirror under water so that the sun's rays fall on it. Hold a piece of paper over the mirror so that the rays of the sun reflected by the mirror fall on the paper, if necessary, adjust their relative position. Observe the color spectrum on paper.

What's happening: The water and the mirror act like a prism, splitting the light into its color spectrum. This happens because the rays of light passing from one medium (air) to another (water) change their speed and direction. This phenomenon is called refraction. Different colors are refracted differently, violet rays are more strongly decelerated and change their direction more strongly. Red rays slow down and change their direction to a lesser extent. The light is split into its component colors and we can see the spectrum.

The second experiment - modeling the sky in a glass jar

Materials needed for the experiment:

a transparent tall glass or a transparent plastic or glass jar;
water, milk, teaspoon, flashlight;
a dark room;

Conducting an experiment:

Fill a glass or jar 2/3 full with water, approximately 300-400 ml.
Add 0.5 to one tablespoon of milk to the water, shake the mixture.
Taking a glass and a flashlight, go to a dark room.
Hold a flashlight over a glass of water and point the beam of light at the surface of the water, look at the glass from the side. In this case, the water will have a bluish tint. Now point the flashlight at the side of the glass, and look at the beam of light from the other side of the glass, so that the light passes through the water. This will give the water a reddish tint. Place a flashlight under the glass and point the beam of light upwards while looking at the water from above. In this case, the reddish tint near the water will look more saturated.

What happens in this experiment is that small particles of milk suspended in water scatter the light coming from a flashlight in the same way that particles and molecules in the air scatter sunlight. When the glass is illuminated from above, the water appears bluish due to the fact that the blue color is scattered in all directions. When you look directly at the light through the water, the flashlight appears red, as some of the blue rays have been removed due to light scattering.

The third experiment - mixing colors

You will need:

pencil, scissors, white cardboard or a piece of drawing paper;
colored pencils or felt-tip pens, a ruler;
a mug or a large cup with a diameter at the top of 7-10 cm or a caliper.
Paper cup.

How to conduct an experiment:

If you don't have a caliper, use a mug as a template to draw a circle on a piece of cardboard and cut out the circle. Using a ruler, divide the circle into 7 approximately equal sectors.
Color these seven sectors in the colors of the main spectrum - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Try to paint the disc as accurately and evenly as possible.
Make a hole in the middle of the disc and put the disc on the pencil.
Make a hole in the bottom of the paper cup, the diameter of the hole should be slightly larger than the diameter of the pencil. Turn the cup upside down and insert a pencil with a disc into it so that the pencil lead rests on the table, adjust the position of the disc on the pencil so that the disc does not touch the bottom of the cup and is above it at a height of 0.5..1.5 cm.
Quickly spin the pencil and look at the spinning disk, note its color. If necessary, adjust the disk and pencil so that they can rotate easily.

Explanation of the phenomenon seen: the colors that paint the sectors on the disk are the main components of the colors of white light. When the disk spins fast enough, the colors seem to blend and the disk looks white. Try experimenting with other color combinations.

If our planet did not revolve around the Sun and was absolutely flat, the celestial body would always be at its zenith and not move anywhere - there would be no sunset, no dawn, no life. Fortunately, we have the opportunity to watch the sunrise and sunset - and therefore life on planet Earth continues.

The Earth relentlessly moves around the Sun and its axis, and once a day (with the exception of the polar latitudes) the solar disk appears and disappears behind the horizon, marking the beginning and end of daylight. Therefore, in astronomy, sunrise and sunset are the times when the upper point of the solar disk appears or disappears above the horizon.

In turn, the period before sunrise or sunset is called twilight: the solar disk is not far from the horizon, and therefore part of the rays, falling into the upper layers of the atmosphere, are reflected from it to the earth's surface. The duration of twilight before sunrise or sunset directly depends on latitude: at the poles they last from 2 to 3 weeks, in the subpolar zones - several hours, in temperate latitudes - about two hours. But at the equator, the time before sunrise is from 20 to 25 minutes.

During sunrise and sunset, a certain optical effect is created when the sun's rays illuminate the earth's surface and the sky, painting them in multi-colored tones. Before sunrise, at dawn, the colors are more subtle, while sunset illuminates the planet with rays of rich reds, burgundy, yellows, oranges and, very rarely, greens.

The sunset has such an intensity of colors due to the fact that during the day the earth's surface warms up, the humidity decreases, the speed of air flows increases, and dust rises into the air. The difference in colors between sunrise and sunset largely depends on the area where the person is and is watching these amazing phenomena nature.

External characteristics of a wondrous natural phenomenon

Since one can speak of sunrise and sunset as two identical phenomena, differing from each other in saturation of colors, the description of the sunset over the horizon can also be applied to the time before sunrise and its appearance, only in reverse order.

The lower the solar disk descends to the western horizon line, the less bright it is and becomes first yellow, then orange, and finally red. The sky also changes its color: at first it is golden, then orange, and at the edge - red.

When the sun's disk comes close to the horizon, it acquires a dark red color, and on either side of it you can see a bright band of dawn, the colors of which go from bluish-green to bright orange from top to bottom. At the same time, a colorless radiance forms over the dawn.

Simultaneously with this phenomenon, opposite side an ash-bluish stripe appears in the sky (the shadow of the Earth), above which you can see an orange-pink segment, the Belt of Venus - it appears above the horizon at a height of 10 to 20 ° and is visible in clear skies anywhere on our planet.

The more the Sun goes below the horizon, the more purple the sky becomes, and when it falls four or five degrees below the horizon, the shade acquires the most saturated tones. After that, the sky gradually becomes fiery red (the rays of the Buddha), and from the place where the sun disk has set, stripes of light rays stretch upwards, gradually fading away, after the disappearance of which near the horizon you can see a fading strip of dark red color.

After the shadow of the Earth gradually fills the sky, the Belt of Venus dissipates, the silhouette of the Moon appears in the sky, then the stars - and night falls (twilight ends when the solar disk goes six degrees below the horizon). The more time passes from the departure of the Sun below the horizon line, the colder it becomes, and by morning, before sunrise, the lowest temperature is observed. But everything changes when, after a few hours, the red Sun rises: the solar disk appears in the east, the night leaves, and the earth's surface begins to warm up.

Why is the sun red

Since ancient times, the sunset and sunrise of the red Sun has attracted the attention of mankind, and therefore people have tried to explain with all the methods available to them why the solar disk, being yellow, acquires a reddish tint on the horizon line. The first attempt to explain this phenomenon was legends, followed by folk omens: people were sure that the sunset and sunrise of the red Sun did not bode well.

For example, they were convinced that if the sky remained red for a long time after sunrise, the day would be unbearably hot. Another sign said that if before sunrise the sky in the east is red, and after sunrise this color disappears immediately - it will rain. The rising of the red Sun also promised bad weather if, after its appearance in the sky, it immediately acquired a light yellow color.

The rising of the red Sun in such an interpretation could hardly satisfy the inquisitive human mind for a long time. Therefore, after the discovery of various physical laws, including Rayleigh's law, it was found that the red color of the Sun is explained by the fact that it, as having the longest wave, in dense atmosphere Earth scatters much less than other colors.

Therefore, when the Sun is near the horizon, its rays glide along the earth's surface, where the air has not only the highest density, but also extremely high humidity at this time, which delays and absorbs the rays. As a result of this, only rays of red and orange colors can break through the dense and humid atmosphere in the first minutes of sunrise.

Sunrise and sunset

Although many believe that in the northern hemisphere the earliest sunset occurs on December 21, and the latest on June 21, in reality this opinion is erroneous: the days of the winter and summer solstices are only dates that indicate the presence of the shortest or longest day of the year.

Interestingly, the further north the latitude, the closer to the solstice comes the latest sunset of the year. For example, in 2014, at a latitude located at sixty-two degrees, it occurred on June 23. But at the thirty-fifth latitude, the latest sunset of the year occurred six days later (the earliest sunrise was recorded two weeks earlier, a few days before June 21).

Without a special calendar at hand, it is quite difficult to determine the exact time of sunrise and sunset. This is due to the fact that while rotating uniformly around its axis and the Sun, the Earth moves unevenly in an elliptical orbit. It is worth noting that if our planet moved around the Sun, this effect would not be observed.

Humanity has noticed such deviations in time for a long time, and therefore, throughout its history, people have tried to clarify this issue for themselves: the ancient structures they erected, which are extremely reminiscent of observatories, have survived to this day (for example, Stonehenge in England or the Mayan pyramids in America).

For the past few centuries, astronomers have been creating calendars of the Moon and Sun to calculate the time of sunrise and sunset by observing the sky. Nowadays, thanks to the virtual network, the calculation of sunrise and sunset can be done by any Internet user using special online services - all you need to do is specify the city or geographical coordinates(if the desired location is not on the map), as well as the required date.

Interestingly, with the help of such calendars, you can often find out not only the time of sunset or dawn, but also the period between the onset of twilight and before sunrise, the length of the day / night, the time when the Sun will be at its zenith, and much more.

Despite scientific progress and free access to a variety of sources of information, a rare person can correctly answer the question why the sky is blue.

Why is the sky blue during the day?

White light - namely, it radiates from the Sun - consists of seven parts of the color spectrum: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The counting rhyme known from school - "Every Hunter Wants to Know Where the Pheasant Sits" - just determines the colors of this spectrum by the initial letters of each of the words. Each color has its own wavelength of light: the longest for red and the shortest for purple.

The sky (atmosphere) familiar to us consists of solid microparticles, tiny drops of water and gas molecules. Over time, there have been several misconceptions trying to explain why the sky is blue:

the atmosphere, consisting of the smallest particles of water and molecules of various gases, passes the rays of the blue spectrum well and does not allow the rays of the red spectrum to touch the Earth;
small solid particles - for example, dust - suspended in the air scatter blue and violet waves the least, and because of this they manage to reach the Earth's surface, unlike other colors of the spectrum.

These hypotheses were supported by many famous scientists, but studies English physics John Rayleigh showed that it is not solid particles that are the main cause of light scattering. It is the molecules of gases in the atmosphere that separate the light into color components. A white sunbeam, colliding with a gas particle in the sky, scatters (scatters) in different directions.

When colliding with a gas molecule, each of the seven color components of white light is scattered. In this case, light with longer wavelengths (the red component of the spectrum, which also includes orange and yellow) is scattered worse than light with short waves (the blue component of the spectrum). Because of this, after scattering, eight times more blue spectrum colors remain in the air than red ones.

Although violet has the shortest wavelength, the sky still appears blue due to the mixture of violet and green wavelengths. In addition, our eyes perceive blue better than purple, with the same brightness of both. It is these facts that determine the color scheme of the sky: the atmosphere is literally filled with blue-blue rays.

Why is the sunset red then?

However, the sky is not always blue. The question naturally arises: if we see blue skies all day long, why is the sunset red? Above, we found that red is the least scattered by gas molecules. During sunset, the Sun approaches the horizon and the sunbeam is directed to the Earth's surface not vertically, as during the day, but at an angle.

Therefore, the path that it takes through the atmosphere is much longer than what it takes during the day when the Sun is high. Because of this, the blue-blue spectrum is absorbed in a thick layer of the atmosphere, not reaching the Earth. And longer light waves of the red-yellow spectrum reach the surface of the Earth, coloring the sky and clouds in the red and yellow colors characteristic of sunset.

Why are clouds white?

Let's touch on the topic of clouds. Why are there white clouds in the blue sky? First, let's remember how they are formed. Moist air, containing invisible steam, warms up near the surface of the earth, rises and expands due to the fact that the air pressure at the top is less. As it expands, the air cools. When a certain temperature is reached, water vapor condenses around atmospheric dust and other suspended solids, and as a result, tiny droplets of water are formed, the merger of which forms a cloud.

Despite their relatively small size, water particles are much larger than gas molecules. And if, meeting air molecules, the sun's rays are scattered, then when they meet water drops, the light is reflected from them. At the same time, the initially white sunbeam does not change its color and at the same time “paints” the cloud molecules white.

The daylight has fascinated man since ancient times. The sun was deified, and not without reason, because its light and heat are necessary conditions for the existence of life. The slightest change in the color of the solar disk became the basis for many legends and folk signs. In particular, the red color of the star disturbed the person. And yet, why is the sun red?

Myths about the sun

Probably, every nation of the world has at least one old legend or belief associated with the solar disk. IN Ancient Egypt the cult of the sun god Ra (or Amon-Ra) was widespread. The Egyptians believed that Ra every day sails across the sky in a golden boat, and at night in the underworld afterlife he fights with the creature of darkness, the serpent Apep, and, having defeated him, returns to heaven again and brings the day with him. IN Ancient Greece The sun was considered the son of the main god Zeus - Helios, who travels across the sky in a chariot drawn by fiery horses. The Indians of the Inca tribe worshiped a solar deity, which they called Inti. The sun, like other gods of Inca mythology, was sacrificed in blood.

The ancient Slavs also revered the sun. The ancient Slavic god of the sun had four hypostases, or incarnations, each of which was responsible for a certain period of the year. Time from winter solstice before the spring equinox belonged to Horse, who was represented as a middle-aged man. Yarilo, the god of youth and bodily pleasures, purity and sincerity, answered for spring and early summer (until the summer solstice). He was portrayed as a young handsome youth with golden brown hair and sky blue eyes. In the period from the summer solstice to the autumn equinox, Dazhdbog entered into force - the warrior god responsible for prosperity and success, the god who gives life. Well, winter was considered the time of the old sun - Svarog, the father of all gods.

Signs related to the color of the sun

Watching the sun, people have noticed for a long time that at sunset and sunrise, the solar disk sometimes acquires a reddish tint. For a very long time, the reason for such changes remained unknown, which did not prevent humanity from inventing beautiful legends in an attempt to explain the inexplicable. In addition, various events were associated with the color of the sun. So there were many signs. In general, it all came down to one thing - the rising of the red sun in the morning or its sunset in the evening does not bode well. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the red color on a subconscious level is associated in humans with blood and danger.

scientific explanation

In fact, everything is not so scary. When asked why the sun is red, there is a simple scientific explanation. This is due to the dispersion of sunlight. The solar spectrum consists of seven primary colors, which are scattered in the Earth's atmosphere in different ways. And at sunrise and sunset, only red remains visible, since it has the longest wavelength.