Learn what color the Sun is and why it appears different colors from Space, the Earth, and in photographs. When you mix all those colors together you get white, and that is why white is the true color of the Sun. Check out photos of the Sun taken by astronauts (with no filters).
The Sun appears white on them! But seen from the Earth, the Sun can have many colors: from whitish-yellowish when it is high above the horizon, to red when it sets or rises. The sun is often depicted as yellow, but scientifically, its true color is white. This difference arises from how the sun emits light and how that light interacts with Earth's atmosphere before reaching our eyes.
The Sun's True White Light The sun is a G2V star. Its surface, the photosphere, maintains a temperature of 5,778 Kelvin. 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. This is useful because if this. 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 peak wavelength in a spectrum also generally determines an object's apparent colour. So, for example, cooler stars appear red and hotter stars appear blue, with orange, yellow and white stars in between.
For the Sun, the spectrum actually peaks at a wavelength that we would normally describe as green. 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. The color of the sun is actually white, though it may look yellow. If you were to get close enough to the sun, which you can't actually do, you'd be able to see its true color.
Think the Sun is yellow? Think again. Discover the true color of our star and why it looks so different from Earth's surface. The Sun appears yellow, but its colour depends on how the atmosphere filters its light.
Discover what makes it so changeable and surprising.