Red Sky In Jambi Known As The 'Rayleigh Scattering', Here's the Explanation

TRIBUNBATAM.id -  Residents of Pulau Mentaro Village, Kumpeh Subdistrict, Muaro Jambi District, were shocked by the phenomenon of Red Sky on Saturday (9/21/2019) this afternoon. 

Local resident, Mardiana, said the change in the color of the red sky occurred around 10.42 WIB until 14.00 WIB on Saturday (9/21/2019). 

So, what is exactly the cause of this skys' color change?

Ad-interim Head of the Center for Data and Information (Kapusdatin) Management of National Disaster Department (BNPB), Agus Wibowo Soetarno revealed that the red color occurs because of the movement of smog from a hotspot. 

"The red color was the smog that moves from hotspots in the southern province of Riau Province," said Agus , Saturday (9/21/2019) night 

According to him, this hotspot has been around since mid-August 2019. 

Rayleigh Scattering

On the other hand, Indonesian amateur astronomer, Marufin Sudibyo explained that the red sky phenomenon wasn't caused by high temperatures or the influence of fire. 

"This is the phenomenon of Rayleigh Scattering. Rayleigh Scattering is an elastic scattering of light by micro / nano particles in the air that smaller than the wavelength of the visible light," Marufin said when confirmed separately on Saturday (9/21/2019) . 

Marufin revealed that this phenomenon is common. 

The reason is, this Rayleigh phenomenon causes the sky to turn blue during the day and turn red at dusk or dawn. 

"In this Jambi case, the density of micro / nano particles in the air seems large enough to be denser than the concentration of particles in the normal air," Marufin said. 

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"Because it's denser, the sun's rays passing through it will be scattered especially at short wavelengths (blue spectrums and surrounding ) to medium (green spectrums and surrounding )," he added. 

Thus, was only leaving long wavelengths (red spectrums and surrounding) that can continue to the surface of the earth. 

That is what makes the sky look reddish that looks like in Muaro Jambi.