Last friday I was at a high school football game with my girlfriend and she noticed that the moon was red. She asked me why and I guessed that it was probably because of the smoke in the air and had somehow made the moon look red. Is that why the moon was really red or am I totally off? :huh:

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Was there supposed to be a lunar eclipse at that time in your area?

When the moon is low on the horizon it's light is passing through more of our atmosphere before it gets to our eye, making the light waves longer (appear the color red). This is the same thing that happenes to the sun when it rises and sets I believe.

StarLab, I don't think that there was a lunar eclipse ( not any that I know of) and galaxygirl I think that you're explanantion makes great sense, Thanks.

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sorry about the grammar. That's suppose to be your explanation. Thanks again.

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"Try not to become a man of success, but rather, try to become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein

Actually the Moon appears red near the horizon becase more of the blue light is scattered away; none of the light rays actually change their wavelength, but the average wavelength of the non-scattered light is longer...

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What a coincedence.. I was going to ask a similar question..

At a lunar eclipse, how come the moon appears red when the earth has moved exactly in front of it? How can it be that when the eclipse "isn't complete" , you see a black void "on the moon", and when it's completely eclipsed, you see a red moon? How can it reflect light :blink:

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Hi All

Light refracted through the Earth's atmosphere illuminates the moon and because all other frequencies are lost on the way it comes out red - thus the colour and light are from the same cause. If Earth was airless the shadow would blacken the Moon utterly.

qraal

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The universe is not only weirder than we imagine, it's weirder than we CAN imagine.

Ya, that's right. The light on the moon comes from the sun, refracted by the earth's atmosphere. You must have seen iagrams of the sun bending rays of light ( general relativity). Imagine the same diagram, but with the earth instead of the sun, and a lunar eclipse taking place. The cause of bending is not, gravity but refraction.
Now, due to refraction, the path of light is curved, and it bends, falling on the moon. Red light is the least scattered of all the coulours of visible spectrum, and hence only it remains when the sun's light has passed through the earth's atmosphere on the way to the moon.
Thus, only red light is reflected from the moon, and we see the moon red.

Can anyone tell me why red is the least scattered of all the coulours?

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Rayleigh scattering is dependent on the wavelength; it is in fact inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength, so only blue light is scattered appreciably.

http://www.sundog.clara.co.uk/atoptics/sunsets.htm#ray

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Thanks to all it makes sense now.

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"Try not to become a man of success, but rather, try to become a man of value." -- Albert Einstein

I think it is for the Total Internal Reflection and probably it is of the wave length of the red sppectrum being refracted to the area where from we are viewing

Perhaps the easiest way to think about it is that there are small dust particles suspended in the atmosphere. If the wavelength of light is significantly larger than the dust, the photon will go around the dust unperturbed. If it is significantly smaller than the dust, it will reflect off of the dust [or be absorbed and re-emitted at a longer wavelength].

Blue light has about half the wavelength of red light, and a significant fraction of the dust is at a size that reflects blue, and is ignored by red. This is why the sunset is red, and the sky is blue.

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Can severe storms in sandy areas of the planet not also appear to make the moon red due to the very fine sandy particles suspended in the atmosphere ? :huh: h34r:

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Sure, as long as there is enough of the right sized dust particles suspended without there being so many that the sky is opaque. But then, so could putting a red filter in front of your face, or looking at the moon through a bottle of chinese hot oil [yum].

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