Title: A Colorful Divide

Description: Sunset arrives over the Alexander Archipelago Islands in Alaska, and a Bald Eagle flies by our boat as we trek north to our next port of call. Have you ever wondered why the further something is from you, the more it fades away (usually with a bluish tint)? I decided to find out why. When you gaze at a faraway summit, there's a whole lot of atmosphere sitting between your eyeballs and the actual mountain. The quantity will only increase with distance. More air means more air molecules, which means more light-scattering. As the space between you and your favorite mountain widens, the latter gets bluer and fainter until — finally — it disappears from sight. That's why when we look at mountains far off in the distance, they appear to look blue. Our sun, the magnificent star we all depend on, gives off white light. Rays of sunshine appear white because they mix together all the colors of the rainbow. We're talking red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Sunlight requires an average of eight minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Earth. Things get interesting once it hits our atmosphere, which is loaded with unimaginably small air molecules. Even wavelengths of visible light dwarf the tiny air molecules. And wouldn't you know it? Blue light has one of the shortest wavelengths in the entire visible light spectrum, which means blue colors scatter most in the atmosphere. That is why the sky looks blue to us. In this photo the sky is definitely orange though, so don't believe everything you read!

"A Colorful Divide" is part of the Limited Edition Collection: A Stitch in Time - Panoramic Perspectives.