Re: [Phys-L] Where is the sky?

["John Clement" <clement@hal-pc.org>]

Is it really necessary to have the scattering confined to one region?  Think
of being underwater.  If you look horizontally you see what appears to be a
cylindrical surface around you a distance away.  But we know the water near
you does not have different properties from the water farther away.  Your
mind and experience with nearby objects in the sky makes you see a bowl
above you.  At night do you see the stars at different distances?  Once
objects get beyond the limit of binocular vision, your mind makes up a
distance scale so you see the stars as being a bowl above you.  What you see
is what your mind made up!

John M. Clement
Houston, TX

> How is it that the blue sky of scattered sunlight appears to 
> come from a 
> highly localized source confined to a distant hemispherical 
> surface?  Does 
> not the entire atmosphere participate in this scattering?