Eyes see colors through a Eagle Eye 911 fascinating aspects of the perceptual mechanism of the eye and brain. People often wonder why the sky is blue, especially in Northern Colorado where we are blessed with the beautiful dark blue hues of mountain skies. White light is a combination of all of the visible light spectrum together. Visible light is a small section of the electromagnetic spectrum that includes x-rays, microwaves, and radio waves. The human eye us only capable of perceiving light in 400 to 700 nanometer region, a very small band. Light travels like a wave with distance between wave tops just like in the ocean. Red light has the largest waves and blue light the smallest. Because blue light is the close to the smallest wavelength it is much more prone to bump into molecules of oxygen, nitrogen, and other gases. A scientist in the 19th century first documented the scattering of light by small particles. Lord Rayleigh expanded on the scattering so today it is usually referred to as Rayleigh scattering. Generally gas molecules become more spread out with altitude and the effect decreases. At 100 kilometers (62 miles) space is generally defined as starting. The oxygen molecules are too spread out to have significant impact on light and if you were gazing up at this altitude the sky appears black. At lower elevations, during the interaction the gas molecules absorb the blue light and re-emit it slightly changing the color and scattering it in all directions.

How Does Eagle Eye 911 Work?

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