Amateur astronomer and astrophotographer Bill Funcheon captured this photo of the red moon over New Jersey on July 20, 2021. (Image credit: Bill Funcheon)
Have you looked up this week to see a bright red moon or sun? Wildfires in the western U.S. are impacting the sky's colours thousands of miles away.
People from across the United States have flocked to social media this week to note the strange colours in both the daytime and nighttime skies, with the sun and moon turning a brilliant, blood-red and skies greyed with haze. While the sky can appear in different colours for a number of reasons, the current redness is caused by the ongoing Bootleg wildfire in Oregon.
Even as far away as New York City, thousands of miles from Oregon, the thick smoke from this extreme wildfire, which began on July 6 and has already burned 364,000 acres, according to the BBC, is clouding the skies.
Now, if you've seen the sun or moon looking red, it's not that these objects have actually turned colour. Rather, particles in Earth's atmosphere that lies between us and the sun and moon can affect how they appear by affecting the photons of light.
Source: space.com
