The Sun would have to emit only green light for our eyes to perceive it as green. This means the actual colour of the Sun is white. So, why does it generally look yellow? This is because the Earth's atmosphere scatters blue light more efficiently than red light.
Learn what color the Sun is and why it appears different colors from Space, the Earth, and in photographs. The sun is white-kind of. It depends on your interpretation of color, the way colors work, the way our eyes see and, just as importantly, the air we see through.
The sun emits light across all the visible colors in the electromagnetic spectrum fairly evenly. When these come together united in sunlight the sun appears white. That is why incandescent light bulbs emit light that mimics sunlight so well: they contain metal filaments that are heated until they glow in the same way that the sun does.
It may be tempting to examine the color content of sunlight and identify the brightest color (the peak frequency) as the actual color of the sun. The sun looks yellow because Earth's atmosphere changes its color as we see it. If you see the sun from space, it looks white, which is its true color.
Atmosphere scatters blue and violet light away, making the sun look yellow when we see it. Sunglight is composed of colors from violet to red (abbreviated as VIBGYOR). Violet has the lowest wavelength and red has the highest wavelength.
Combinedly, this forms a white color, which is the net color of the Sun. The Sun's Actual Hue The sun emits energy across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, including visible light. Within the visible light portion, the sun produces all colors of the rainbow, from red to violet.
When these colors are combined in roughly equal proportions, the human eye perceives them as white. The actual colour of sunlight is white. While it might appear yellow or orange at different times of the day, sunlight is a composite light made up of all the colours of the visible spectrum.
Think the Sun is yellow? Think again. Discover the true color of our star and why it looks so different from Earth's surface.