Sunrise & sunsets explainer

[Music] You may have noticed some of the sunsets are looking a bit more red and orange. 22 News Storm Team meteorologist Alexa Biano takes a look at what makes them so unique. Just about a week ago, we had some very smoky and beautiful sunsets from the Canada wildfires. But what makes sunsets and sunrises orange and red and what makes the sky blue? I got these fun and simple pictures from NASA to help me explain. Most of us know light is white. However, light shines through a prism which gives us the rainbow. Light can also be reflected like a mirror or scattered as it travels. When the sunlight reaches Earth, light bumps into gases and particles. Short waves scatter more than long. It's called scattering. If we take a look here at the prism here, white light travels through this prism which disperses as the rainbow giving us all these colors. And we take a look here which brings me to the next thing. These different types of wavelengths. Blue and violet has less atmosphere which is a thinner layer to travel through or pass through because the sun is higher during the day resulting in us seeing blue skies. Red and oranges are longer waves. So when the sun is lower in the sky at sunset and sunrise, light has to travel through more air or atmosphere leaving us to see those reds and oranges. You can see here red is the longest wave here and then blue is the shortest. Basically, the more air light travels through, the more blue gets scattered away before getting to our eyes, leaving us these beautiful sunsets and sunrises that I love to see, especially working for you. 22 News Storm Team 22 News Storm Team Meteorologist Alexa Biano.