The chief colors of which sunlight or white light is composed are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, though there are an infinite number of gradations of color which blend into one another, gradually producing the intermediate tints and shades. The colors just mentioned are called the primary colors of the solar spectrum, which can be produced as a band of light of variegated colors, arranged in the order named by passing a ray of ordinary sunlight through a glass prism. The individual rays of different color and wave-length that make up a beam of sunlight, or white light, then separate out in the order of the wave-lengths. The red rays vibrate the most slowly and have the longest wave-length of all the rays of the visible spectrum. About four hundred trillion vibrations of red light reach the eye in one second. Violet rays, on the other hand, vibrate the most rapidly of all the visible rays and have the shortest wave-length. About eight hundred trillion vibrations of violet light reach the eye every second. The wave-lengths of the intermediate colors decrease in length progressively from the red to the violet and, of course, the frequencies of their vibrations increase in the same order. All sunlight is made up of these rays of different colors and different vibration frequencies, and of other rays as well, to which the human eye is not sensitive, and which, therefore, do not appear in the visible spectrum. Among these invisible rays are the infra-red rays which come just below the red of the visible spectrum, and which are of longer wave-length than the red rays, and the ultra-violet rays, which lie beyond the violet rays of the visible spectrum, and are of shorter wave-length than the violet rays. Now a ray of ordinary sunlight is separated into the rays of various colors, which form the solar spectrum when it passes from a medium of one density obliquely to a medium of another density, as when it passes from air to glass, or from air to water, or from outer space into the earth's atmosphere. Under such circumstances its velocity is slowed down when it passes from a rare to a denser medium, and the waves of different wave-lengths are bent from their former course, or refracted, by different amounts. The red rays, of longest wave-length, are bent from their former course the least, and the violet rays, of shortest wave-length, are bent the most upon passing from a rare to a denser medium. As a result the ray of sunlight is spread out or dispersed into its rays of different wave-length and color upon entering a medium of different density. It is this refraction and dispersion of sunlight that produces many color effects in the earth's atmosphere.