How do you differentiate between morning sky and evening sky?
Asked by
prasad (
3859
)
October 21st, 2009
If you’re shown a photo/picture, how would you differentiate between the sky at sunrise and sunset?
If you draw/sketch/paint, how do you do this?
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23 Answers
Mistiness is almost always associated with morning, so that would be a giveaway. Without that, I’m not sure it’s possible
You can’t unless there are other clues, the ocean to the East or West, or things like stars (Venus – etc.)
@DarkScribe you stole my answer! Good job being on the ball.
@grumpyfish So, you are the grumpyfish that has said some things that are showed when asking a question!
Wait 5 minutes. One will get darker while the other will get lighter.
Well if I look out the window and the sun is to me left, it’s a sunrise. If it’s to my right, it’s sunset.
I don’t wake up early enough (nor would I want to) to check out sunrises, but sunsets are all kinds of weird colors. I guess the pacific ocean has something to do with it.
The hue is different. Morning sky is purer/cleaner.
As evening sky has more elements in it..
It seems to me that sunrises tend to be more yellow/orange than sunsets, which tend toward red/orange/purpleish. Possibly my imagination and/or a product of the few places I’ve consistently seen both sunrises and sunsets.
Where I live, @MissAnthrope is right—we have spectacular sunsets (pollution!!) but just ok sunrises.
Sunrises, iirc, tend to have hints of the night sky in them—blues/purples, whereas sunsets are more truely red/orange/yellow.
Of course, that doesn’t hold true for these two pics, but it’s easy to tell sunrise from sunset: look at where the light is.
@ABoyNamedBoobs03 Several weeks ago when it was about the same at 7 am and 7 pm I woke up in a start and saw 7:15 on the clock. I panicked because I had an 8 am appt. I rinsed grabbed the 1st thing and got dressed while brushing everything and called a cab I got downstairs by 7:40. I’m saying cmon cab, cmon cab until I realized the foggy sky was getting darker. Then I remembered I had lain down for a nap after work.
@galileogirl – that is so funny and I can so relate! I have a problem knowing what day it is so my watch tells me, without that I would be lost.
@evegrimm , tend to have hints of the night sky in them—blues/purples, whereas sunsets are more truely red/orange/yellow.
Not at all. This is a winter sunrise shot of the sun rising out of the sea over Surfers Paradise – taken from Eagle Heights in the mountains – one that I took a few months ago. It has as much blue as a sunset. When there is fog or mist it becomes even harder – this was about the same time of day a week or two later a river dawn shot. The fog filters almost all colour out – it could be an overcast mid-afternoon.
The sun in each case is on or below the horizon, it makes little difference whether it is morning or evening. This dawn mist shot was facing away from the previous river dawn shot a few moments later. The fog & mist shots you could guess at being morning only because fog is more common around dawn than any other time of day. There are still occasional evening fogs so you can never be absolutely sure.
Morning sky is bluer, evening sky is orange and browner.
@DarkScribe, it could be a location thing. Since I haven’t really observed sunrises/sets elsewhere, it is difficult to generalise. Sunrise in Phoenix vs. sunset, for comparison.
Everybody else seems to think the opposite of what I said!
Although we have the coolest thunderstorms!
I don’t know, but my son the amateur photographer has gotten up early to catch a certain light at dawn that I’m sure he would have been happy to wait until evening for if it were the same.
I expect sunrise to be sligntly clearer/bleaker/greyer, sunset to look warmer.
@Jeruba – I’m a photographer, too, and really trying to analyze the light differences. I’m looking out the window now, it’s about an hour after sunrise and the sunlight looks golden, but maybe not as warm as sunset.. As Jack_Haas said, the quality of the light seems warmer at sunset and cooler now. Sunset is my favorite time to take photos, the lighting is simply amazing and adds a really beautiful quality to the photos.
The main difference, atmospherically—GENERALLY—is that it’s colder at sunrise than at sunset. Sunrise is usually the coldest part of the entire day, barring outside influence (e.g., a front moving through).
If you’re somewhere where cold = mist, you get mist/fog at sunrise.
If you’re somewhere where hot = hazy, you get haze (‘warmer”) at sunset.
@Jeruba my son the amateur photographer has gotten up early to catch a certain light at dawn
The first hours and the last hours of the day do have the best light, which I why I also go out before down with a camera – but when actually shooting the sun it can be hard to tell the difference. Photographers have had guessing games for decades tying to assess whether a shot is a sunrise or sunset. The thing is that unless you can find other clues in the shot it can be effectively impossible. If you are “nature savvy” there are other clues, the vegetation growth tend to angle toward the sun, moss and lichen grows on the shady side of trees and rocks, things like that will tell you which way is east and west.
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