Twilight and daytime colors of the clear sky

Appl Opt. 1994 Jul 20;33(21):4629-38. doi: 10.1364/AO.33.004629.

Abstract

Digital image analysis of the cloudless sky's daytime and twilight chromaticities challenges some existing ideas about sky colors. First, although the observed colors of the clear daytime sky do lie near the blackbody locus, their meridional chromaticity curves may resemble it very little. Second, analyses of twilight colors show that their meridional chromaticity curves vary greatly, with some surprising consequences for their calorimetric gamuts.