Great way to start the day

Although I work from home most of the time these days, there are days when I have to travel to Dublin or Limerick for work meetings and the like, usually no more than one or two days a week which is fine. I actually enjoy it and it makes a nice change from the home office and gives me a chance to listen to a few tunes or a pod cast or call some friends for an auld chin wag.

These non work from home days mean an early start for me and the alarm will be set for 4am, 5am or 5:30am at the latest. Up I get, quick shower, coffee in a travel cup for the car, grab what I need for the day and out the gap.

I always love the days when I am greeted with a picturesque sky at dawn and I got one such morning last week where orange, pink and red hues cascaded the sky outside my backdoor and I thought grab a few pics for Hive, so here we are.

Cloud formations

There is something special about clouds. I love the variance of colours, the mix of shapes and the uncertainty of what the clouds might bring with them.

Clouds are especially impressive at dawn and dusk, as the angle of the light from the sun often creates some colour scapes like we see in the photos below.

Why is the sky red sometimes?

Did you ever wonder why the sky was red at dusk and dawn and not at other times of the day? Of course you've notice this, but maybe you don't know why, so let me explain, it is because of something called Raleigh Scattering.

Before I explain what Raleigh Scattering is though, let me give somebackground, starting with this iconic Pink Floyd album cover, which I am sure most of you recognise.

That album cover is of course from the 1973 hit record from Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon and what an album it was, if you are not familiar with it, I implore you to seek it out and have a little listen, here are two of my favorite songs from the album

They just don't make them like this anymore as we close in on the fifty year anniversary of this masterpiece, but I have darted off on one of tangents, my point was not to talk about Pink Floyd's music, but rather use the iconic image to demonstrate that white light is made up of all of the colours of the rainbow and this can be demonstrated by passing the lights through a prism like the one on the front of Dark Side of the Moon.

Ok, so that next thing to note in the context of red skies at dawn and dusk is to understand what the sky is made of, well it is made of air of course and what is air made up of primarily? That's right 21% Oxygen and 78% Nitrogen, for the purpose of this conversation, we won't worry about the other 1%.

Light travels through these molecules and at the start and end of the day, that light has further to travel through the atmosphere to reach our eyes and as a result the blues and violets are reflected away by Rayleigh scattering. These colours have shorter wavelengths as we can see below and are thus scattered at this time of the day, which relates to the angles of the sun's rays relative to your position as the observer.

What we are left with are the parts of the sunlight of longer wavelength – the reds and oranges which is what you often observe at dawn or dusk on a clear day.

As the day progresses, the sun rises further and those colours quickly disappear and are replaced by the blue and violet which we see as the colour of the sky for the rest of the day and it just so happens that our eyes are better at picking up blue light, so that is what we observe.

Ok, OK, enough science at least some of you are shouting, and I have just the tonic, the cutest dog on the face of the earth, yep I'm biased.

Coco approves

That's another thing about the early morning starts, I get some time with my beloved puppy (almost dog) Coco. Our springer spaniel is a little ball of energy and love and is an integral part of the family at this stage.

Whenever I'm up early, I'll allow some time to throw one of her toys so that she gets a few laps of the garden before I go. That's one thing about Springers, they need loads of exercise. Here are a few pictures of Coco and the beautiful sunrise.