Why are the Moon and Sun sometimes orange or red?

A question asked by my son was, " Why is the

moon sometimes orange? Or red? What causes
this? "
The orange and red tints that the Sun and Moon
sometimes take on are caused by the particles in the
Earth's atmosphere.
When light (or more specifically, packets of light
called photons) from an astronomical object passes
through the Earth's atmosphere, it scatters off of
particles in the latter. It turns out that these particles
like to scatter blue light more than they do red light;
so "bluer" photons (those with shorter wavelengths)
tend to get scattered, and "redder" photons (those
with longer wavelengths) pass through. So,
astronomical objects look redder from Earth than
they would from space, because the redder
wavelengths from the objects penetrate the
atmosphere better than the bluer ones. Incidentally,
this is why the sky is blue: blue light from the Sun is
scattered in all directions on its way to the Earth.
But how does this explain the occasional redness of
the Moon or the Sun? Your son may have noticed
that they always occur when the Sun or Moon is
close to the horizon. If you think about it, sunlight or
moonlight must travel through the maximum amount
of atmosphere to get to your eyes when the Sun or
Moon is on the horizon (remember that that
atmosphere is a sphere around the Earth). So, you
expect *more* blue light to be scattered from Sunlight
or Moonlight when the Sun or Moon is on the
horizon than when it is, say, overhead; this makes
the object look redder. In other words, the Sun or
Moon tends to look orange or red when it is rising or
setting because that's the time when the light has to
travel through the most atmosphere to get to you. The
effect is exacerbated when there are thin clouds in
front or behind the Sun or Moon: the clouds
themselves often glow bright pink as well, because
they are so good at scattering blue light.





Why do stars twinkle?
The songline goes "Twinkle twinkle little star". What is the
cause of the "twinkling" of stars? Does light from planets
"twinkle" as does light from stars?
A young person of my acquaintance asked me this
question, and I didn't have a good answer.
Stars twinkle because of turbulence in the atmosphere of the
Earth. As the atmosphere churns, the light from the star is
refracted in different directions. This causes the star's
image to change slightly in brightness and position, hence
"twinkle." This is one of the reasons the Hubble telescope is
so successful: in space, there is no atmosphere to make the
stars twinkle, allowing a much better image to be obtained.
Planets do not twinkle the way stars do. In fact, this is a
good way of figuring out if a particular object you see in the
sky is a planet or a star. The reason is that stars are so far
away that they are essentially points of light on the sky,
while planets actually have finite size. The size of a planet
on the sky in a sense "averages out" the turbulent effects of
the atmosphere, presenting a relatively stable image to the
eye.