Hey guys, Teempakguy here! (sometimes I wonder what I was smoking when I chose my moniker.)

Today, we're going to talk about something I've loved since I was a little kid.

the Sky.



I just love the sky. till date, it's one of the most beautiful things I constantly enjoy. if you are close to me, you will describe me to other people as . . . "that guy that always looks up for no reason."
but anyway, let's talk about it now. and hopefully, you will learn a lot from this.

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The Blue Sky.

No image needed here. the very first image on this page is that of a blue sky. but anyway, the blue sky is what you are likely to see when you look up on an average afternoon. you might ask, why is it blue?

and I would tell you . . . Rayleigh scattering.
of course, it is named after a british scientist who presumably discovered it. and it is the reason why "oyinbo" eyes are blue. but lets leave that for now.

when a particle of light . . . which is a photon, hits a particle, such as a particle of air in this case, it causes it to oscillate. as in to bob up and down. when this happens, the object produces radiation which we see as scattered light. and this is called Rayleigh scattering. this is like how twigs and leaves bob up and down in a pond when ripples pass under them. one interesting thing is that the sky also scatters purple, and indigo. in fact, the sky ISN'T blue. it's a weird mixture of colors that the human brain cannot comprehend. hence the brain just generalizes and calls the whole thing blue. if the sky were scattering only blue colors, it would look like the sea. with a slight hint of green. but that doesn't happen. because it is balanced by the purple.

and guess what? this same principle is being used in screens today! quick! google lemon. it's yellow, right? well . . . if you're seeing it on a computer screen, it's not. . in fact, your computer can only display three colors. take a moment to to think about that. every color you've ever seen on a screen is just a combination of red, blue, and green.

cossy's boobs, and toolz choco skin . . . is really just a clever combination of red, blue, and green to deceive you. and you said humans are smart?
televisions . . . another thing nature beat us to millions of years earlier, i guess.



Sunrise and Sunset.





just look at astounding beauty . . . I used to look at these pretties a few years ago and relish in their brilliance. with . . . of course, appropriate soundtrack. until some mumu people decided to come and construct a bungalow behind our house. with a roofing twice as tall as the actual house.
since then, I've not been able to . . . you know, view them. however . . . in a few years, I'm going somewhere where my every day will be a treat of sunrise and sunset.

but anyway, how does this all work? well, remember what happened to the sky during the day? when it scattered the wavelengths? and everywhere seemed bleu? (yes, i did that on purpose.)

you see, the earth just so happens to be a sphere. which is rotating. when the sun is overhead, which is when the part of this sphere called earth that you are on is facing the sun, the light gets scattered over a short distance. there is still blue everywhere. but along a tangential path, the blue kind of gets over scattered and it fades away, leaving "everything else." including the red, the green, the yellow . . . and because the rate at which blue is scattered is uneven, the light at sunset features a rich palette of colors. sometimes, the sky appears blue, and the clouds appear red.



Like this.


this is because of the way . . . you know what? how about I just make a quick picture in Microsoft paint and save myself a thousand words?


the striking of the earth at angles by sunlight, is what produces all that beauty. eventually, you have to agree that the earth is one giant crystal. very beautiful indeed.

Night Sky.



the regular night sky isn't really something that is interesting scientifically, but the night when the stars come out . . . oooh, pretty! especially nights when you see the milky way. our very own galaxy from the inside!

i remember the first time I got my glasses. prior to then, whenever I looked at the sky, I would just see a black sheet. I couldn't even see the brightest stars. the first time I saw the night sky . . . I cried. I couldn't believe it . . . tears of joy, man. the tears were fallin'

but anyway, that streak in the sky can be seen with the naked eyes if you guys would just GTFO of your lighted cites, and go and look. and it's even more spectacular with a telescope. that streak is composed of stars. thousands of those things. and what you are looking at is just a tiny fraction of the whole form. the stars are orbiting a black hole at the center of the galaxy. it is called Sagittarius A*.
if you didn't read that right, lemme reinterpret, we are getting sucked into a black hole every second . . . . actually, no we're way beyond the event horizon. we're safe, guys. chill.

another interesting thing is the constellations . . . the constellations which are actually co incidences. the real stars that form the patterns you see on earth are miles apart. and since they are drifting across the milky way on their own, as time passes, the patterns will become unrecognizable. which is interesting, because probably, somewhere in some alien planet, our sun may be part of a constellation. that would definitely be interesting. maybe it will be the nipple of one of their goddesses.

Northern Lights.

This one is on my bucket list. one day . . . I am going to see these with my naked eyes. because they are damn pretty.



so how do these work?
quantum mechanics . . . seriously. they are caused when the charged particles from the sun get very close to the earth's surface, and then lose their energy because of the interaction with the earth's magnetosphere. their electrons go from a more excited phase to a less excited phase. and we all know what happens when this occurs. LIGHT!!!! this is basically how fluorescent light bulbs work.
again, something else nature beat us to. damn you girl!

if you think these things are pretty from the earth, wait till you see how they look from space.

so, I will leave you with some photographs of that . . .



[img]http://static2.techinsider.io/image/55cfc9632acae72d5f8bff58-1123-746/aurora-space-green-red-nasa-scott-kelly.png[/img]








cheers.

Beautiful!!!!!!!!!

Enlightening post and gorgeous sky pics.

Infact I'm going to name my 1st girl Aurora Borealis

cc Lucialovely

Interesting writeup.... nice one teempakguy


seeing photographs of the northern lights from outside our world was the highlight of it all.... Just Magnificent

Nice one teempak... could you pls do something on the clouds some other time? The formation, types, it's importance etc..

Choi, Teempakguy e too long bt it was worth it .

I really love the Blue skies and Night skies, they're so spectacular and alluring.

Cc:
RobinHez.


Lalasticlala, front page pls!

Beautiful