Sunday 26 April 2020

Has the sky always been blue?

Posting about the polarised sky the other day and about the scattering by oxygen and nitrogen causing the blue colour, I started thinking about whether this had always been true. The atmosphere has changed over time since the beginning of the planet. There is a theory that the sky used to appear orange due to methane. https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/277544/orange-sky-3-7-billion-years-ago-because-there-was-little-oxygen The first answer refers to Titan, the moon of Saturn. Here is a lovely film of the visit to Titan by the space probe Huygens https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtYDPj6eFLc (I've always liked Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto!) In the film, there is a definite blue layer visible at the beginning. That must be the nitrogen. Then everything goes orange. I suppose I'd assumed a red dust storm such as happens on Mars but apparently not. For more details on the atmosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(moon)#Atmosphere