The sky's brightness varies greatly over the day, and the primary cause differs as well. During daytime, when the Sun is above the horizon, the direct scattering of sunlight is the overwhelmingly dominant source of light. During twilight (the duration after sunset or before sunrise until or since, respectively, the full darkness of night), the situation is more complicated, and a further differentiation is required.
Twilight (both dusk and dawn) is divided into three 6° segments that mark the Sun's position below the horizon. At civil twilight, the center of the Sun's disk appears to be between 1/4° and 6° below the horizon. At nautical twilight, the Sun's altitude is between –6° and –12°. At astronomical twilight, the Sun is between –12° and –18°. When the Sun's depth is more than 18°, the sky generally attains its maximum darkness.
When physicist Anders Ångström examined the spectrum of the aurora borealis, he discovered that even on nights when the aurora was absent, its characteristic green line was still present. It was not until the 1920s that scientists were beginning to identify and understand the emission lines in aurorae and of the sky itself, and what was causing them. The green line Angstrom observed is in fact an emission line with a wavelength of 557.7nm, caused by the recombination of oxygen in the upper atmosphere.
Airglow is the collective name of the various processes in the upper atmosphere that result in the emission of photons, with the driving force being primarily UV radiation from the Sun. Several emission lines are dominant: a green line from oxygen at 557.7nm, a yellow doublet from sodium at 589.0 and 589.6nm, and red lines from oxygen at 630.0 and 636.4nm.
The sodium emissions come from a thin sodium layer approximately 10km thick at an altitude of 90–100km, above the mesopause and in the D-layer of the ionosphere. The red oxygen lines originate at altitudes of about 300km, in the F-layer. The green oxygen emissions are more spatially distributed. How sodium gets to mesospheric heights is not yet well understood, but it is believed to be a combination of upward transport of sea salt and meteoritic dust.
In daytime, sodium and red oxygen emissions are dominant and roughly 1,000 times as bright as nighttime emissions because in daytime, the upper atmosphere is fully exposed to solar UV radiation. The effect is however not noticeable to the human eye, since the glare of directly scattered sunlight outshines and obscures it.
Indirect scattering of sunlight
Amount of air still illuminated after sunset, at the horizon. Normalized so that zenith is 1 airmass
Indirectly scattered sunlight comes from two directions. From the atmosphere itself, and from outer space. In the first case, the Sun has just set but still illuminates the upper atmosphere directly. Because the amount of scattered sunlight is proportional to the number of scatterers (i.e. air molecules) in the line of sight, the intensity of this light decreases rapidly as the Sun drops further below the horizon and illuminates less of the atmosphere.
When the Sun's altitude is < -6° 99% of the atmosphere in zenith is in the Earth's shadow and second order scattering takes over. At the horizon, however, 35% of the atmosphere along the line of sight is still directly illuminated, and continues to be until the sun reaches -12°. From -12° to -18° only the uppermost parts of the atmosphere along the horizon, directly above the spot where the Sun is, is still illuminated. After that, all direct illumination ceases and astronomical darkness sets in.
A second source sunlight is the zodiacal light, which is caused by reflection and scattering of sunlight on interplanetary dust. Zodiacal light varies quite a lot in intensity depending on the position of the Earth, location of the observer, time of year, and composition and distribution of the reflecting dust.
Scattered light from extraterrestrial sources
Not only sunlight is scattered by the molecules in the air. Starlight and the diffuse light of the Milky Way are also scattered by the air, and it is found that stars up to V magnitude 16 contribute to the diffuse scattered starlight.
Other sources such as galaxies and nebulae don't contribute significantly.
The total brightness of all the stars was first measured by Burns in 1899, with a calculated result that the total brightness reaching earth was equivalent to that of 2,000 first-magnitude stars [2] with subsequent measurements by others.[3]
Light pollution is an ever-increasing source of sky brightness in urbanized areas. In densely populated areas that do not have stringent light pollution control, the entire night sky is regularly 5 to 50 times brighter than it would be if all lights were switched off, and very often the influence of light pollution is far greater than natural sources (including moonlight). With urbanization and light pollution, one third of humanity, and the majority of those in developed countries, cannot see the Milky Way.[4]
Twilight
When the Sun has just set, the brightness of the sky decreases rapidly, thereby enabling the viewing of the airglow that is caused from such high altitudes that they are still fully sunlit until the Sun drops more than about 12° below the horizon. During this time, yellow emissions from the sodium layer and red emissions from the 630nm oxygen lines are dominant, and contribute to the purplish color sometimes seen during civil and nautical twilight.
After the Sun has also set for these altitudes at the end of nautical twilight, the intensity of light emanating from earlier mentioned lines decreases, until the oxygen-green remains as the dominant source.
When astronomical darkness has set in, the green 557.7nm oxygen line is dominant, and atmospheric scattering of starlight occurs.
Differential refraction causes different parts of the spectrum to dominate, producing a golden hour and a blue hour.
Relative contributions
The following table gives the relative and absolute contributions to night sky brightness at zenith on a perfectly dark night at middle latitudes without moonlight and in the absence of any light pollution.
(The S10 unit is defined as the surface brightness of a star whose V-magnitude is 10 and whose light is smeared over one square degree, or 27.78 mag arcsec−2.)
The total sky brightness in zenith is therefore ~220 S10 or 21.9 mag/arcsec² in the V-band. Note that the contributions from Airglow and Zodiacal light vary with the time of year, the solar cycle, and the observer's latitude roughly as follows:
where S is the solar 10.7cm flux in MJy, and various sinusoidally between 0.8 and 2.0 with the 11-year solar cycle, yielding an upper contribution of ~270 S10 at solar maximum.
The intensity of zodiacal light depends on the ecliptic latitude and longitude of the point in the sky being observed relative to that of the Sun. At ecliptic longitudes differing from the Sun's by > 90 degrees, the relation is
where β is the ecliptic latitude and is smaller than 60°, when larger than 60 degrees the contribution is that given in the table. Along the ecliptic plane there are enhancements in the zodiacal light where it is much brighter near the Sun and with a secondary maximum opposite the Sun at 180 degrees longitude (the gegenschein).
In extreme cases natural zenith sky brightness can be as high as ~21.0 mag/arcsec², roughly twice as bright as nominal conditions.
Sunlight is a portion of the electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun, in particular infrared, visible, and ultraviolet light. On Earth, sunlight is scattered and filtered through Earth's atmosphere as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon. When direct solar radiation is not blocked by clouds, it is experienced as sunshine, a combination of bright light and radiant heat (atmospheric). When blocked by clouds or reflected off other objects, sunlight is diffused. Sources estimate a global average of between 164 watts to 340 watts per square meter over a 24-hour day; this figure is estimated by NASA to be about a quarter of Earth's average total solar irradiance.
The zodiacal light is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun's direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac, and appears with less intensity and visibility along the whole ecliptic as the zodiacal band. Zodiacal light spans the entire sky and contributes to the natural light of a clear and moonless night sky. A related phenomenon is gegenschein, sunlight backscattered from the interplanetary dust, which appears directly opposite to the Sun as a faint but slightly brighter oval glow.
Sunrise is the moment when the upper rim of the Sun appears on the horizon in the morning, at the start of the Sun path. The term can also refer to the entire process of the solar disk crossing the horizon.
Sunset is the disappearance of the Sun at the end of the Sun path, below the horizon of the Earth due to its rotation. As viewed from everywhere on Earth, it is a phenomenon that happens approximately once every 24 hours, except in areas close to the poles. The equinox Sun sets due west at the moment of both the spring and autumn equinoxes. As viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, the Sun sets to the northwest in the spring and summer, and to the southwest in the autumn and winter; these seasons are reversed for the Southern Hemisphere.
Dawn is the time that marks the beginning of twilight before sunrise. It is recognized by the appearance of indirect sunlight being scattered in Earth's atmosphere, when the centre of the Sun's disc has reached 18° below the observer's horizon. This morning twilight period will last until sunrise, when direct sunlight outshines the diffused light.
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from outer space.
Diffuse sky radiation is solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface after having been scattered from the direct solar beam by molecules or particulates in the atmosphere. It is also called sky radiation, the determinative process for changing the colors of the sky. Approximately 23% of direct incident radiation of total sunlight is removed from the direct solar beam by scattering into the atmosphere; of this amount about two-thirds ultimately reaches the earth as photon diffused skylight radiation.
A sunbeam, in meteorological optics, is a beam of sunlight that appears to radiate from the position of the Sun. Shining through openings in clouds or between other objects such as mountains and buildings, these beams of particle-scattered sunlight are essentially parallel shafts separated by darker shadowed volumes. Their apparent convergence in the sky is a visual illusion from linear perspective. The same illusion causes the apparent convergence of parallel lines on a long straight road or hallway at a distant vanishing point. The scattering particles that make sunlight visible may be air molecules or particulates.
Skyglow is the diffuse luminance of the night sky, apart from discrete light sources such as the Moon and visible individual stars. It is a commonly noticed aspect of light pollution. While usually referring to luminance arising from artificial lighting, skyglow may also involve any scattered light seen at night, including natural ones like starlight, zodiacal light, and airglow.
The night sky is the nighttime appearance of celestial objects like stars, planets, and the Moon, which are visible in a clear sky between sunset and sunrise, when the Sun is below the horizon.
Airglow is a faint emission of light by a planetary atmosphere. In the case of Earth's atmosphere, this optical phenomenon causes the night sky never to be completely dark, even after the effects of starlight and diffused sunlight from the far side are removed. This phenomenon originates with self-illuminated gases and has no relationship with Earth's magnetism or sunspot activity.
The Belt of Venus – also called Venus's Girdle, the antitwilight arch, or antitwilight – is an atmospheric phenomenon visible shortly before sunrise or after sunset, during civil twilight. It is a pinkish glow that surrounds the observer, extending roughly 10–20° above the horizon. It appears opposite to the afterglow, which it also reflects.
The air mass coefficient defines the direct optical path length through the Earth's atmosphere, expressed as a ratio relative to the path length vertically upwards, i.e. at the zenith. The air mass coefficient can be used to help characterize the solar spectrum after solar radiation has traveled through the atmosphere.
The Rayleigh sky model describes the observed polarization pattern of the daytime sky. Within the atmosphere, Rayleigh scattering of light by air molecules, water, dust, and aerosols causes the sky's light to have a defined polarization pattern. The same elastic scattering processes cause the sky to be blue. The polarization is characterized at each wavelength by its degree of polarization, and orientation.
Earth's shadow is the shadow that Earth itself casts through its atmosphere and into outer space, toward the antisolar point. During the twilight period, the shadow's visible fringe – sometimes called the dark segment or twilight wedge – appears as a dark and diffuse band just above the horizon, most distinct when the sky is clear.
An astronomical filter is a telescope accessory consisting of an optical filter used by amateur astronomers to simply improve the details and contrast of celestial objects, either for viewing or for photography. Research astronomers, on the other hand, use various band-pass filters for photometry on telescopes, in order to obtain measurements which reveal objects' astrophysical properties, such as stellar classification and placement of a celestial body on its Wien curve.
Franklin Evans Roach was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, geophysicist, professor, and scientist analyzing UFO phenomenon who made significant contributions to the field of aeronomy in upper atmosphere research as one of its fathers. Roach was involved in high explosives physics research connected with the Manhattan Project and later with NICAP and the Condon Committee as part of ufology.
A heliospheric imager is a wide-field camera that is designed to image the solar wind in interplanetary space, far from the Sun itself.
Chappuis absorption refers to the absorption of electromagnetic radiation by ozone, which is especially noticeable in the ozone layer, which absorbs a small part of sunlight in the visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. The Chappuis absorption bands occur at wavelengths between 400 and 650 nm. Within this range are two absorption maxima of similar height at 575 and 603 nm.
Long-distance observation is any visual observation, for sightseeing or photography, that targets all the objects, visible from the extremal distance with the possibility to see them closely. The long-distance observations can't cover:
↑ Burns, G. J., "The total amount of starlight and the brightness of the sky," The Observatory, Vol. 33, p. 123-129, March 1910; available at SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (retrieved 27 Nov. 2015)
↑ Yntema, L., "On the Brightness of the Sky and Total Amount of Starlight," Publications of the Kapteyn Astronomical Laboratory Groningen, vol. 22, pp.1-55 (1909); available at SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (retrieved 27 Nov. 2015)
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