- #36
vhbelvadi
- 67
- 1
cmb said:The Sun is green [evidence: its peak wavelength is the same as the colour of green plants]
The ocean is green, it is full of the same chlorophyl pigment-bearing micro-organisms found in all other plants, and that match the peak emission of the Sun. [Take a photo of the sea with a ploarising filter set to vertical, so all the horizontal reflections are taken out of it.]
The sky is white, just the same colour as the clouds. The blue is an optical illusion - the blue receptors in the eye respond to an excess of UV stimulation making you think you're seeing blue. [evidence/thought experiment: take a white sheet of paper out in a rowing boat all painted sky blue. Dress head to toe in sky-blue clothing. What colour do you think the paper now looks? If the sky really was blue, why does white paper look white when shaded from the sun but otherwise under a fully blue sky? Answer - because the paper does not reflect the UV element of the spectrum, thereby avoiding the false stimulation of the eye making it think it is seeing blue.]
[Caveat - this is a straw-man proposition for you to cut down. I am not suggesting there isn't an element of blue in either the sea or the sky, because there is Rayleigh scattering going on, no doubt. But I do not think I have yet seen evidence to suggest it is the major part of us seeing blue.]
Drakkith said:This effect is explained pretty well in the following link. I have never seen evidence to the contrary so I don't have any reason to not believe it.
See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_sky_radiation
Spectrum of blue sky somewhat near the horizon pointing east at around 3 or 4 pm on a clear day. Spectrum was taken using an Ocean Optics HR2000 spectrometer [1] with a high-OH solarization-resistant fiber optic light guide. this spectrum is NOT BY ANY MEANS IDEAL and was taken from inside a laboratory through probably 4 panes of window glass, thus completely attenuating virtually all radiation below 400nm also the end of the fiber optic was not coupled to any collimating optics thus there may be some slight skewing of the spectrum due to diffuse reflections off surrounding buildings and trees etc. Because the response of the CCD detector in the spectrometer is not linear the spectrum in the infrared region is also less than what is actually present in sunlight; the blackbody spectrum of sunlight continues much further into the infrared than is shown here. This spectrum is not calibrated for intensity.
You say you've never seen evidence otherwise. I'll put forward the paper experiment again - if you stand in the shade of a blue building and stand on a blue carpet, then if you look at a piece of white paper then surely it should look blue? Why does a piece of white paper not look blue under a blue sky, if the colours coming down from the sky are truly 'blue'?
Drakkith said:We "see" blue because that end of the spectrum is scattered more than the reddish end. In regards to the topic, I think we should avoid the issue of how color vision works and stick to wavelengths of light and the effects of the atmosphere on them.
Drakkith said:Also, to my knowledge, the best response for the eye in sunlight is the Green/Yellow area, not its worst.
Stcloud said:The sky is not blue, the grass is not green.. the colour is in us. Please see 'Physics Light'
and from there be directed to 'colour'.
I realize it might be a 'shot-out-of-the-green' to realize 'blue sky' might be a perceptual illusion, but think it over and the idea might warm on you after a while!
You can see there is a stack of near-UV and UV that is filtered and/or selectively scattered, but overall we still appear to end up with more green wavelengths at sea level than any other 'colour'.
My interpretation of all of this is that the rods contribute significantly to our perception of green; if the rods detect 'bright' and the cones detect low 'red' and 'blue' we see that as green. But in white light there is also lots of red and blue, so the eye simply calls that 'white' as it can't resolve any differences for peaks around green.
Indeed. Colour is a human 'perception'.Stcloud said:The sky is not blue, the grass is not green.. the colour is in us. Please see 'Physics Light'
and from there be directed to 'colour'.
cmb said:The issue of the blue sky is different to these two. It appears to be over stimulation of the S cells by UV, because they have sensitivity right through to 400nm*, but is related to the first in that if it is 'only green' then the eye 'allows itself' to be easily fooled because it just doesn't 'do green' very well. It'll take other cues preferentially, if there are any, and allow them to over-ride a perception of green.
*(viz. if the eye is still 50% sensitive to 420nm than at 450nm, so if there is a stack of 400-420nm energy bundled into light that is strong in all wavelengths, then it'll tend to perceive that additional 'violet' as shading the white light towards strong blue. Caveat; again, I will repeat that this is a contribution to the effect of 'blue sky' but there is, agreed, a general shift towards blue due to scattering. It is the ratio of those two effects on the final perception of blue I do not believe is known or well understood.)
Drakkith said:This is incorrect. A rod cell is desensitized after it has been exposed to a large number of photons. It does not contribute to color vision at all...White light looks white because it is stimulating all our cone cells at the same time. The combined input is filtered and interpreted by the brain and is perceived as white.
cmb said:I'll happily take the correction on your advisement that this is so, but whether the green perception is significantly rods or M cones (that are not well-discriminating to the L cones), [edit:] and also however much filtering the eye does actually do on the UV content that hits the retina*. Whatever the nature of these fine details, ultimately it is self-evident (from the perceived spectrum of black-body radiators, and absence of green therein) we see green mainly by inference from the content of the rest of the spectrum, rather than direct perception of the peak of radiated emissions. Thus, we cannot directly perceive the peak of 'blue-green wavelengths' in the spectrum of the sky.
*(clearly, there are levels of UV emission that will make it to the retina, else there would be no need for UV safety glasses!)
Drakkith said:Ever heard of snow blindness? It is caused by sunburn to the cornea and lens
NASA said:The tissues in the eye transmit a substantial part of the radiation between 380 and 1400 nm to the light-sensitive retina at the back of the eye.
Drakkith said:And yes, the issue of color vision is very complex and isn't 100% understood. We don't see the green-blue peak as green blue because the M cone that corresponds to green is much further away at its peak than the S cone is.
There are (at least) three things wrong with this:cmb said:I'll overlay a colour spectrum over the 'spectrum of blue sky' given in the page you've just linked to.
D H said:There are (at least) three things wrong with this:
- Where in the world did you get this spectrum?
Reaaaaaally.Drakkith said:Ever heard of snow blindness? It is caused by sunburn to the cornea and lens (and other areas) of the eye by UV radiation.
Seriously? About the only consistent thing I've noticed with portrayals of the spectrum of visible light is an utter lack of consistency, particularly between 450 nm and 600 nm (blue to yellow), and particularly so those available on the internet. Just a smattering:cmb said:It matches every other spectrum I've seen so I saw no reason to question it.
Compare that spectrum to a published one, one that is not taken through four panes of glass that attenuates the blue, and one that is taken with a calibrated device.The spectrum of the blue sky is what I expected to see, also.
I just did with regard to the spectrum of the blue sky. Now for some colors. Note that green has a hue of 120 degrees. The sky is not green. It's blue with a tinge of green. So let's look at some colors, starting with some cyans (490 to 520 nm) and moving toward blue (440 to 490 nm).Can you provide alternatives?
...the spectral irradiance of daytime skylight was shown to be a metameric match to a mixture of a monochromatic blue light plus white light (unsaturated blue light).
Imagine looking through a paper towel roll at the Sun (don't do this at home!). The spectrum of the light you see shortly before you go blind is the direct irradiance spectrum. Specifically, the direct irradiance is that light that comes out from from a cone pointed directly at the Sun and having a radius of about 3 degrees. The diffuse sky irradiance is all the light coming from the sky except for that light coming directly from the Sun. In other words, the diffuse sky irradiance is the light from the clear blue sky (or the light filtering through a bunch of clouds, depending on the condition of the sky).cmb said:In regards the paper you have found, this looks more authoritative for sure. But what is 'direct irradiance spectra' and 'diffuse irradiance spectra'? I guess the audience of that paper knows the difference, but 'fraid I don't.
First off, I doubt that you have ever conducted this experiment. If you had, you would know that the only color you see is the tiny but brilliant patch of blue you see when you look straight up the well. (This is why you cannot see stars from the bottom of a well during the day.) Everything else is black and white. There just isn't enough light coming down the well for your cones to be active.The thing I still don't get, you see, is that if you take a sheet of white paper and go sit at the bottom of a well that only looks up to blue sky, with a spectrum as you point to on p8, does the paper still look white and not blue, if the only light coming down the well shaft to the bottom is light that comes from the sky, peaking around 400~450nm? Either it is blue, or it looks blue. If the former, then why don't white things look blue in that light, when shaded from all other direct reflections from the Sun, if the sky looks blue due to that light?
The peak wavelength in a spectrograph is a high frequency blue, maybe even indigo. Our eyes don't see energy flux. They see photon flux. The peak in the photon flux is a lower frequency blue, azure. That is more or less what we see.cmb said:Still, I'd tend to think my basic point, that the blue observed is a constrution of colour perception rather than an actually observed 'peak wavelength', remains.
D H said:Seriously? About the only consistent thing I've noticed with portrayals of the spectrum of visible light is an utter lack of consistency, particularly between 450 nm and 600 nm (blue to yellow), and particularly so those available on the internet. Just a smattering:Compare that spectrum to a published one, one that is not taken through four panes of glass that attenuates the blue, and one that is taken with a calibrated device.
J. J. Michalsky et. al., "Shortwave, Clear-Sky Diffuse Irradiance in the 350 to 1050 nm Range: Comparison of Models with RSS Measurements at the Southern Great Plains ARM Site in September/October 2001". http://www.arm.gov/publications/proceedings/conf13/extended_abs/michalsky-jj.pdf
The graph on page 8 shows the peak is somewhere between 420 and 460 nm: indigo to blue. So why do we see a sky the color of the sky as azure? Simple: Our eyes don't see energy flux. We see photon flux. That shifts the color we see toward the red from the peak in the spectral irradiance plot.I just did with regard to the spectrum of the blue sky. Now for some colors. Note that green has a hue of 120 degrees. The sky is not green. It's blue with a tinge of green. So let's look at some colors, starting with some cyans (490 to 520 nm) and moving toward blue (440 to 490 nm).
MediumAquamarine. Hue = 160 degrees
DarkCyan. Hue = 180 degrees
DeepSkyBlue. Hue = 195 degrees
DodgerBlue. Hue = 210 degrees
Royal Blue. Hue = 225 degrees
Blue. Hue = 240 degrees