Lucky enough to be an early riser?
If so as well as preparing a Valentine's Day breakfast for a loved one you may have had a moment to glance out of the window and see a fantastic pink and purple sunrise today.
Why are sunrises so many different colours and often so vivid?
How the human eye sees sunlight is a complex phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering which causes light from the sun to bounce off tiny particles in the atmosphere and scatter in different directions.
Sunlight boasts many different colours: from red, which has the longest wavelength of all visible light, through to violet at the blue end of the spectrum, which has the shortest wavelength.
The reason why we have a blue sky is due to this short wavelength.
Blue light is scattered more effectively than other colours, and this is why the sky normally appears blue to us.
But at sunrise or sunset, however, when the sun is low on the horizon, the light rays must pass through more of the atmosphere – and therefore bounce off more molecules – than at other times of day.
Click below to see more sunrise - and sunset - pictures shot in Huddersfield
This means that more blue light gets scattered away before the light reaches your eyes.
Other colours – such as red, orange, pink and yellow – can therefore continue to pass through the atmosphere unaffected, creating beautiful colours at the start and end of the day though it often seems that sunsets are that bit more vivid than sunrises.
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