Talk:Sky

TV

I think a link to the Sky Satelite TV service should be provided. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Blake02 (talk • contribs) 10:09, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

I argee with this person. [1]. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Philip1992 (talk • contribs) 12:25, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Its been done. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.142.130.26 (talk) 00:52, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

Difficulty defining "Sky?"

This statement from the article is interesting: "There is no 'blue object' above the earth in any normal sense, so it is hard to say what object the sky is(for a retared)." Yet there certainly is a blue substance up there. It's called air. Air is colored blue for the same reason that any blue object looks blue: when the air is illuminated by white light, the short wavelengths are preferentially reflected to our eyes. However, the blue of the air is a structural color produced by wave effects, whereas most other blue substances are blue because of preferential absorbtion. (Other examples of structural color: the blue of bird feathers, the blue of human irises, the blue of aerogel and cigarette smoke, ...and the bright colors of holograms, interference filter elements, and soap bubbles.)

Perhaps a widespread misconception is the cause of our misunderstanding. People seem to believe that pure dust-free air is completely transparent. Actually, only a thin layer of air is transparent, while a thick layer behaves as a blue substance, and a very thick layer would appear as white as milk. ("Thin" here means thinner than ten miles or so.)

Analogy: similar things happen when we look at a muddy river, versus a glass of water from the same river. If we look at the glass of clear water and decide that river water is perfectly transparent, then we'd be hard pressed to explain the brown opacity of the river, and might put it down to arcane causes such as "molecular scattering." A simple description would be that river water is a dilute brown color, and a thin enough layer is perfectly clear.

So shouldn't we say that air is a blue substance, but a thin enough layer looks clear? --Wjbeaty 19:40, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

It seems that this difficulty may lie in the fact that someone tried to define "sky" by what we see, rather than by defining what objects make it up. This may be valid for phenomenon like Aurora, but I think common terms like "in the sky" imply that the sky takes up real space, and is therefore a real object, as opposed to a perception-based phenomenon.

I have re-worked the definition on this basis, and I think it is quite a bit more clear.Forbes72 (talk) 04:13, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

The color of the sky is in dispute again!

The edit indicated by:

2007-02-11T12:29:24 Spiel496 (Talk | contribs) (→Sky luminance and colors - If it "appears" blue, it _is_ blue; not violet)

may merit being reverted, but I will not do it without consensus.

However, I also think the previous explanation was incomplete/fuzzy, which is what prompted this person to "be bold" in his or her edit. But I don't know enough about it to suggest what the correct wording is.

Here is an example of something I know about from first hand experience that might help nail this down. Granted the human eye barely perceives violet, and ultraviolet not at all. That the sky is heavily violet, despite our inability to see it, is easily demonstrated via photography. Film is able to see a wider gamut than the eye, extending well into the violet. I routinely fit my camera with a "Sky" filter for the deliberate purpose of forcing my film to only see what I can see.

Additionally, polarization of the sky's light should at least be mentioned in any truly complete explanation of the sky's appearance.

I understand why Spiel496 changed it. A better explanation needs to be developed. Badly Bradley 08:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I apologize for not checking back earlier; I didn't mean to "edit and run". I would just warn that color perception is fairly complicated. It can't be that relevant thatt the eye is more sensitive to some wavelengths than others. Even if you change the eye's sensitivity by putting on color-tinted glasses, the effect is only temporary. After a few minutes, paper looks white again and trees look green. Spiel496 17:24, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Hello there, i just disputed the colour of the sky by adding "citation needed" to the fact that you call it blue. Im not realy dooing this to despute the colour of the sky (not that i precive the sky as blue since my colourvision is rather fubar but it seems to be the general sensus that it is blue). Instead this is some childish trashing of me since i just got fedup with the resent snobbery of "citation needed" and alikes on Wikipedia. I expect it to be reverted. Yes, this spelling is fubar to. 83.226.168.237 07:57, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I have a problem with "The sky is blue". It has no citations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.220.75.184 (talk) 20:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I must confess that I most wholeheartedly agree with you; I think that this whole citation needed/POV business is getting way out of hand. Wikipedia is not as good as it once was. However, try not to vandalise again as it wo't get us anywhere. thank you. 211.30.132.2 11:58, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

User 211.30.132.2: Adding a 'citation needed' tag is not vandalism. While it might be argued as 'disrupting wikipedia to prove a point,' said arguments would need to maintain that a 'citation needed' tag was, in fact, disruption.

Interestingly, I checked out the first citation that the sky is blue (which presented photos--photos are not proof of colour, but I digress). Most of the images were broken, and only one showed the sky as mostly blue (with strong orange and yellow at the horizon).

It does remain interesting that Wikipedia's guidelines on Original Research do not, for some reason, apply to the colour of the sky. Apparently the requirement of citations is only really necessary when convenient.65.87.20.98 (talk) 22:38, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Well I would say that the sky is not a physical phemonon but a sensory phenomenon. You could state that the athmosphere is mostly refracting UV and violet, but that is not how we perceive the sky. There is a lot of research done by Minnaert how we perceive the skye trying to describe the shape the skye has to humans. Also the polarization is not that relevant to our eye even though it is possible to see Haidingers figures for the trained eye. For photographers it is relevant maybe to mention the necessity of UV and polarization filters.Viridiflavus (talk) 12:40, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Is the sky really deep blue? To me 'deep' connotes a certain darkness when used to characterize colours. Wiktionary defines 'deep blue' as 'intense blue', which suggests not just brightness but purity. The blue of the sky is far from pure; its lightness indicating the presence of white light. 'Sky blue' would clearly be less than helpful. I would describe it as a light blue, but perhaps, rather than attempt to nail down a particular shade/hue, something like 'vivid blue' would be less misleading than 'deep blue'? Grant (talk) 12:44, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

The Blind demand an objective empirical third-party to verify where in the visible light spectrum the sky falls. The previous citation, "look outside for yourself" doesn't do for the blind. Nor does the citation before that, "Bob told me" qualify as a worthy encyclopedia entry. Who is Bob? I'll check my B volume of the Encyclopedia Brittannica to find out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.174.167.166 (talk) 03:24, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Protection or semi-protection

I think it's time to protect or at least semi-protect this article. Just take a look at the history. How many times has "Sky" been vandalized? I've just erased some vandalism ("Sky is a person, he's small and nice" or something). Does anyone agree with me? Victao lopes 16:21, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been away for a few days. I can't believe how much crap has been done to this article! I vote to Protect the article. Badly Bradley 03:35, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I've listed Sky at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection, but it was declined for not enough vandalism. Maybe we'll have to wait a few more days, or protect/semi-protect Sky ourselves. Those IP have also vandalized other articles such as Happiness, they are here for nothing.Victao lopes 00:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

I listed the page again for protection. --Trelawnie (talk) 14:33, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

check something

http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/miscon4.html#blu see this site and maybe consider that in respect to why the sky is blue. It makes sense that its blue because its blue, like water. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by User13752 (talk • contribs) 01:40, 4 March 2007 (UTC).

the sky is blue 220.239.187.97 23:13, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Isn't the sky blue because of the high concentration of Nitrogen? Correct me if I'm wrong. Viet|Pham (talk) 02:31, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Night sky

I'm seeking for a night sky with stars and so one. There is any picture neither on commons nor here. 83.179.69.133 19:45, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Photos

In all of existence, I can think of nothing that has been seen by more people than the sky, and so it seems silly to have eight images of it. If nobody objects, I intend to remove SI-Sky.JPG, Above_the_Clouds.jpg, Stormy_skies.jpg, and Trees-sky.jpg. -- Headwes 21:04, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

It is out of control, yes. However, in my opinion the ones to keep are Trees-sky.jpg and Sunset02.jpg. Spiel496 22:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I think the photos are the best part of the article. Beautiful photography. --Trelawnie (talk) 14:09, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I accidentally

Guys, I accidentally the first line of the article. I don't know how to make it go back. Sorry. :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by Afisair (talk • contribs) 08:45, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

That's all right. New editors make mistakes. Even experienced admins make mistakes.--The Legendary Sky Attacker 08:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Sun

• During the day the Sun can be seen in the sky

Shouldn't this be changed to through the sky, or something like that? --Grubdubdub (talk) 23:25, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

You can also see the stars in the sky, but you have a point. What we perceive as sky can be blue light from 1 meter uptil ~200 km away from our eye. I admit you see the sun through the clouds, maybe because clouds are more objectlike, able to obscure the sun.

Viridiflavus (talk) 12:24, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

eye color discrimination

what about for those of us, that can't see color

what is blue?

damn right you need a — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.229.195.232 (talk • contribs) 05:20, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

I am totally blind, so I also cannot see colour, but I accept that it looks blue to those who can see colours. Graham87 13:53, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Eye color

then you have no idea of color,

blue to is different to me, and very to different to people of normal vision.

a citation is differently needed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.239.134.48 (talk) 04:13, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Vandalism

In the first paragraph, at least. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.119.231.172 (talk) 12:18, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

All gone now. Graham87 03:52, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

So wait, why is the sky Blue?

The section on sky luminescence is impenetrable. Can someone dumb it down for the layperson? Where's Bill Nye when you need him? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.23.131.92 (talk) 18:42, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I've completely reworked this section to try to make it more clear. Added examples, etc. I've done my best to keep all the technical descriptions intact. It could definitely still use some work, though.Forbes72 (talk) 05:35, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Merge from Night Sky

As neither of these articles is particularly long, and the two are obviously related, it would be easy to merge them. This would also make it easier to address events like eclipses, comets or supernovae, as they have strong astronomical ties, but don't belong exclusively in the "night sky".Forbes72 (talk) 23:09, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. "Night Sky" has a n Astronomy feel to it. "Sky" has an Atmospheric feel to it. The pictures submitted in each have reflected that theory. In my opinion the problem is the lack of Night Sky Photos that have been posted. For instance: Where are the Stars? All I see is a moon and a chart. I think we need to develop and Enhance "Night Sky"; not combine it with "Sky", which holds up pretty well on it's own. user:Pocketthis 12:25, 26 December 2011 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pocketthis (talk • contribs)
• Oppose. There is room in wikipedia for night sky to serve as a subarticle to this one. For now, the lead from the night sky article has been placed as a subsection within this article. This type of format has worked out well for the weather, cloud, lightning, cyclone, tornado, and numerical weather prediction articles. The night sky article can be expanded out by some editor to become more comprehensive. Just because the articles are relatively short does not mean they need to be merged together. If the night sky article was a stub, with only a lead, you would have a better case for merger. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:01, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

It has been three months, and the consensus appears to be keeping the articles separate. My main concern was organization, but I suppose that the scopes of the two articles are definite enough, with "Sky" addressing the sky in general, and "Night Sky" focusing on the astronomy in particular. Since the vote now appears unanimous, I will take down the merge tags.Forbes72 (talk) 17:27, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Restructuring and expansion

This article was missing a bit of content which was already available elsewhere within the meteorology set of articles, a number of which are current good articles (see also: low hanging fruit). Sections from other articles were copied and modified to fit in better with this article's focus. While it still needs a number of references, this article should be a bit more complete now. FYI. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:34, 15 February 2012 (UTC)

Wow, nice work! Graham87 01:35, 16 February 2012 (UTC)

Almost random

The paragraph starting with the sentence "The scattering due to molecule sized particles (as in air) is almost random" needs work. I dispute nearly every sentence. Does someone have a source we can refer to? Spiel496 (talk) 23:54, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Specifically,

• scattering due to molecule sized particles is almost random: I don't know what "random" is supposed to mean. "Uniform", possibly? But according to Rayleigh scattering, the intensity varies like 1 + cos^2(angle).
• The scattering in a 90 degree angle is still half of the scattering that reflects or goes forward: Does "reflects" mean backward scattering? According to Rayleigh scattering, the backward intensity is zero.
• a cloud ... has the white color because all the light ... is scattered multiple times: Is that really the reason? The 10 um droplets in clouds should be large enough that their scattering is wavelength-independent (white) regardless of whether there are multiple scatterings.

Spiel496 (talk) 01:34, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the edit this page link at the top. I have done my best to tackle that paragraph, which originated from the Atmospheric optics article. Hopefully it makes more sense now...the content has been rearranged so that the section reads more fluidly. Atmospheric physics was a class I had significant trouble with in college. Thegreatdr (talk) 02:47, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Anything missing?

Coming from a meteorology background, I filled in the holes in the article relating to weather. The bigger question is whether or not anything is still missing from this article. Common terms such as sky can become very large articles since they usually have numerous aspects. Thegreatdr (talk) 19:02, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Seam in sunrise pic

The recently added picture, showing the sunrise and moon, is pretty, but it has a weird artifact. There's a perfectly horizontal seam near the horizon. It looks like two photos were stitched together. This article being about the sky, the horizon is unnecessary anyway. Is there a cropped version of the photo available that omits the horizon and the weird seam? Spiel496 (talk) 20:43, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I'm too lazy to fix the picture myself, and apparently the editor who added it has gone on to other things, so I'm deleting it. Spiel496 (talk) 18:59, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

That's fine. We had one too many pictures anyway. We need no more pictures within this article unless there is significant expansion. Thegreatdr (talk) 22:38, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Photo was replaced with the Seamless directly photographed original. I grabbed the wrong photo from my gallery when I originally placed that photo in the free space under photo#1.Pocketthis (talk) 19:45, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

Please Explain this chart to me

I don't see it's relevance here. I don't even like it on the Sky brightness page, but that's another issue. I don't think anyone is learning anything from this chart. I've been starring at it for an hour trying to figure out what relevance it has to this article; or anything for that matter. On the other hand, there is no Dusk photo, and I'd like to replace the chart with one of the photos you see under it.

Dusk in Joshua Tree, California USA

The author calls this 'chart': Illuminated-airmass. If he is so smart as to have written this puzzling chart of nothingness, why doesn't he know that "air mass" is two words? I think the chart is useless, in the wrong article, and boring. On the other hand, if there is really something to be learned from this 'Chart' or why it's relevant here, and someone wants to come to it's rescue and explain it to me, I'm all ears, and I thrive on learning. Thanks Pocketthis (talk) 19:42, 9 August 2012 (UTC)

I believe it's a measure of how bright the horizon is, as a function of how far down the sun has set. A value of 1 corresponds to the brightness of the sky directly overhead when the sun is up. The implication is interesting: the brightness of the sky is roughly determined by how much atmosphere there is along the direction one is gazing, multiplied by the fraction of that air that has sunlight on it. The problem, in my opinion, is that the chart is "orphaned" -- the text doesn't refer to it. I'm inclined to leave the chart and hope that someone writes something interesting to go with it. The relevant place to mention it would would be in the various definitions of twilight. I don't see a problem with spelling "airmass" as one word. Spiel496 (talk) 07:33, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Hello Spiel496. Nice to hear from you, and you know I respect your opinion...always have. It seems you agree with me that the relevance of the chart to this article as it stands is weak at best. I'll leave the writing of a twilight section to those more competent than me. I understood the chart to be exactly as you explained it when I blew it up, but thought it was useless where it is, and personally uninteresting. As far as the spelling of Air-mass, Webster agrees with me. It's either two separate words, or one word when separated with a hyphen. I have made the spelling correction under the chart, and leave the rest of decision making to those in the scientific community. Perhaps a move to the Twilight Article would be a good idea for this 'Chart'. Thanks for your reply.Pocketthis (talk) 15:16, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

How about this suggestion: If we must have a Chart opposite the Dusk text, how about this one. It is certainly more relevant to the text; and much more informative to the subject at hand than what we're using. It doesn't help my "photo quest" ....but I'm easy. Pocketthis (talk) 15:48, 11 August 2012 (UTC)

Dusk is the end of evening twilight

Chart Exchanged

After 60 days with no objections, the orphaned old chart was exchanged with a chart that relates more to the text it is opposite: Dusk and Dawn. Pocketthis (talk) 17:13, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

(Old Chart)

Dusk is the end of evening twilight (New Chart)

Pocketthis (talk) 17:28, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Stars in night sky.

Given Wikipedia's draconian "original research" policies, there should be a citation for the sky having stars at night because apparently observation counts as original research. 203.211.127.70 (talk) 11:08, 2 December 2012 (UTC)