Seeing a red sun
Seeing a red sun tells you its light is crossing extra air, smoke or dust on the way to you. It is also a lesson in habit: children in the United States color the sun yellow, while Japan's flag makes it red.
What it may mean
Ask a kindergartener in the United States to color the sun and the crayon is yellow; in Japan, where the flag carries a red disc on white, children reach for red. Neither is the sun's own color. Above the atmosphere sunlight is white, and what reaches you depends on how much air, dust or smoke it passes through. Low on the horizon, or behind smoke drifting from distant fires, the sun turns orange and then deep red, sometimes at midday. A red sun at an odd hour shakes the crayon loose for a while. Much of what people see is what they were taught to expect: which colors look cheerful, which gestures look rude, which sky looks like a warning. An omen list from 1903 called a red sunrise unpropitious, one more taught way of seeing.
Depending on how you saw it
The red sun on Japan's flag
Japan's flag, the Hinomaru, puts a red sun on a white field, and the country's own name refers to the sun's origin. A symbol seen every day shapes how people picture the real thing. Which symbol from where you grew up colors how you see something ordinary?
Explaining it to a child
Children ask why the sun turned red, and the honest answer, that its light is crossing more air than usual, often satisfies them better than a story would. Which simple explanation have you been avoiding because a story felt easier?
A red sun in a photo
Phone cameras often exaggerate a red sun, so the shot looks stranger than the sky did. Shared online, it can make a hazy afternoon look like the end of the world. Which of your own photos makes a day seem more dramatic than it felt?
Why it happens in nature
Sunlight contains all colors. Air molecules scatter the shorter blue wavelengths sideways, so the longer the path through the atmosphere, the redder the sun looks, which is why it reddens near the horizon. Smoke and dust from wildfires, dust storms or haze scatter light even more strongly and can turn the sun orange or red high in the sky.
To reflect on
What do you see a certain way mainly because of how you were taught to draw it?