Video narration
Why is the sky blue, but sunsets turn red? Sunlight looks white, but it is really a blend of many colors traveling together. As that light passes through air, tiny molecules send it in different directions. They scatter blue light more strongly, so blue spreads across the daytime sky and reaches your eyes from all around. In daytime, sunlight takes a short path through the atmosphere before reaching you. At sunset, it arrives at a lower angle, traveling a much longer path through that same air. Along that longer path, more blue is scattered out of the direct beam, while red and orange keep traveling toward you. This color-sorting effect is called Rayleigh scattering-the simple way air sends blue around more than the other colors. So why the contrast? The shorter path paints the sky blue; the longer sunset path leaves more red and orange for your eyes.