Orange Red Yellow Magenta Sunset Clouds Ocean

Painting or photo?

Although this sunset snapshot may remind you of an abstract expressionist painting, Mother Nature creates these colors not by adding together pigments but by cutting light apart. At sunset or sunrise, white light from the sun must travel farther to reach your eye, striking more tiny atmospheric particles along the way, than at high noon. The particles scatter light like a prism, preventing portions of the color spectrum from entering your retinas—especially cool, low-wavelength blues and greens. Your optic nerves supply your brain with what remains: a wash of warm brushstrokes in orange and violet.