Why isn’t the sky green?

[gaze-universe]

It occurred to me that I'd never seen the color green in our skies and I wondered why, this is what I found:

Yesterday I blogged with a simple version of why the sky was blue and not green. Now I’d like to add mathematics to the treatment. The simple version said that the sky was blue because the sun color was a spectrum centered on yellow. I said that molecules of air scattered mostly the short wavelength, high frequency light colors, indigo and blue. This made the sky blue. I said that, the rest of the sunlight was not scattered, so that the sun looked yellow. I then said that the only way for the sky to be green would be if the sun were cooler, orange say, then the sky would be green. The answer is sort-of true, but only in a hand-waving way; so here’s the better treatment.

Did you know the light of the sun is actually mostly green, not yellow?

 

[DrLeftover]

I'd seen that someplace before, the green sun thing that is.

If I think of it, I'll post a link to the page.

But around here, Central Illinois that is, if the sky DOES turn green or purple or whatever, and I've seen it do it... "head for the cellar and bar the door"... it means the weather is about to get very interesting.

 

[DrLeftover]

This was it:

http://www.universetoday.com/18689/color-of-the-sun/

 

[gaze-universe]

if the sky DOES turn green or purple or whatever, and I've seen it do it... "head for the cellar and bar the door"... it means the weather is about to get very interesting.

Yeah, I read that on a Q&A page just before, about a green sky. Which probably explains why I haven't seen a green sky or the color in any quantity in our skies (Finland) because we don't get very extreme weather.