What is the color of the sun?
www.wtamu.edu
The color of the sun is white. The sun emits all colors of the rainbow more or less evenly and in physics, we call this combination white. That is ...

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!

  • @[email protected]
    11•2 years ago

    Wow, that’s really interesting! I had no idea that the atmosphere worked as a diffuser for only a small part of the spectrum like that

    • @[email protected]English
      6•2 years ago

      Yep the atmosphere is transparent to all colors of light except blue. It doesn’t absorb blue light but it does get scattered. That’s why no matter where you look in the sky, you see blue. Because the gasses there are scattering blue light in all directions, including toward you.

      • @[email protected]
        1•2 years ago

        Isn’t that because blue is higher frequency and therefore refracts more than the other colors?

        • @[email protected]English
          1•2 years ago

          Good question. No idea. If higher frequency correlates with more scattering, then UV should also be scattered, right? Or is it something about blue visible light being just right for our mix of gases? Interesting question since that mix has changed over time. Perhaps the sky was another color during life’s early years. Is that why they’re called the Cyanobacteria? Because they turned the sky blue?

          • @[email protected]
            1•2 years ago

            My understanding is that higher frequency == more refraction, visible or not. So in theory, x and gamma radiation should also experience more refraction. Though I wonder at what point (it any) something too high energy can somehow “pierce” through a medium rather than refracting.