Woolyme

By woolyme

Orange Moon

There was a Bruce Willis film one time when his young self asked why the moon was sometimes orange...

Thanks Wiki

So why does the moon look orange when it is low or when the sky is dusty, smoky or polluted? These circumstances make it more difficult for the light waves to travel all the way to you. When the moon is low on the horizon, it's actually much farther away from you than when it is overhead, so its light has to travel through a lot more atmosphere to reach you.

Along the way, some of the colors (blue, green and purple) get refracted (deflected off their path because of their short wavelength) by the particles in the air ? they just can't make it through all that dust and pollution. The strong light waves that do make it are (you guessed it!) red, yellow and orange ? the colors with the longest wavelengths.

This is also why sunsets look the way they do.



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