Atmospheric refraction and scattering of light
1. Why do stars appear to twinkle, but planets don’t?
The twinkling of a star is due to atmospheric refraction of starlight.
Since the stars are very distant, they approximate point-sized sources of light.
The starlight, on entering the earth’s atmosphere, undergoes refraction continuously. Since the atmosphere
bends starlight towards the normal, the apparent position of the star is slightly different from its actual position.
This apparent position of the star is not stationary, but keeps on changing slightly, since the physical conditions
of the earth’s atmosphere are not stationary. Additionally, the amount of starlight entering the eye flickers – the
star sometimes appears brighter, and at some other time, fainter. This variation in the apparent position of the
star and the amount of light reaching the observer gives rise to the twinkling effect.
The planets, being much closer to the earth, are seen as extended sources. If we consider a planet as a collection
of a large number of point-sized sources of light, the total variation in the amount of light entering our eye from
all the individual point-sized sources will average out to zero, thereby nullifying the twinkling effect
2. Sun is visible about two minutes before the actual sunrise and 2 minutes after the actual sunset. Explain.
The sunrise is advanced and the sunset is delayed due to atmospheric refraction of sunlight.
When the sun is just below the horizon, the light rays coming from it, on entering the Earth's atmosphere suffer
atmospheric refraction from a rarer to denser medium. So, they bend towards the normal at each refraction. Due
to the continuous refraction of light rays at each layer, it follows a curved path and reaches the eye of the
observer. The observer cannot observe the bending of light and to him/her light appears to come from a point
above horizon. The apparent position of the sun is seen above the horizon even though the actual sun is still
under it. As a result, we can see the sun for 2 minutes before it rises above the horizon in the morning or 2
minutes after the sunset in the evening.
3. Why does the sky appear blue on a clear day?
The sky appears blue on a clear day due to the phenomenon of scattering of light.
The molecules of air and other fine particles in the atmosphere have size smaller than the wavelength of visible
light. These are more effective in scattering light of shorter wavelengths at the blue end than light of longer
wavelengths at the red end. Thus, when sunlight passes through the atmosphere, the fine particles in air scatter
the blue colour (shorter wavelengths) more strongly than red. The scattered blue light enters our eyes, making
the sky appear blue in colour.
4. Why is the red colour used for danger signals?
The molecules of air and other fine particles in the atmosphere have size smaller than the wavelength of visible
light. These are more effective in scattering light of shorter wavelengths than light of longer wavelengths at
the red end. Hence, red is least scattered by fog or smoke. So, the danger signals in red colour can be seen from
a greater distance.
5. The sky appears dark instead of blue to an astronaut. Why?
The sky appears dark instead of blue to an astronaut because there is no atmosphere in the outer space that can
scatter the sunlight and give the sky its blue colour. As the sunlight is not scattered, no scattered light reaches
the eyes of the astronauts and the sky appears black/dark to them.