Despite its appearance, air has a ‘thickness’ so when the sun is high in the sky the light travels through the air on a very much shorter path than when it is low on the horizon.
Imagine that air water and you are below the surface, the light from an overhead sun will be quite sharp and bright, but if lower in the sky it will have to travel through much more water to reach you, so will look less bright and sharp. It ma not seem the same, but the atmosphere is just like very thin water, and a low lying sun will be drastically reduced in strength, so all you will see is a sun with a shift to the red end of the spectrum as all the actinic part will be filtered away by that thicker atmosphere.
