cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6080744

The sun is not yellow or orange as we see in books and movies. It emits all the colours in the visible spectrum (also in other spectrums as well) making it white!

  • Spuddaccino@reddthat.com
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    11 months ago

    It’s really a pale blue. If it were white, the visible spectrum would be pretty even, but you can see the graph is higher on the blue edge and lower on the red edge. There’s enough green and red to brighten it a lot, but it’s definitely blue.

    In fact, the sun’s surface temperature is around 5800K, and you can look up what color that actually is wherever you go light bulb shopping.

    This shows the colors based on temperature, and the sun is firmly in the “Day White.” It’s called white, but you can see it’s pretty clearly blue, especially next to the “Direct Sun” color.

  • angrystego@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    It is white when seen from space. Here on Earth, the atmosphere disperses the blue part of the spectrum so that the blue sunlight comes to our eyes from all directions, making the sky blue. Without the blue light, the sun appears more yellow. So the color depends on your point of view :)