The color of the sun reveals a range of information about our star including the stages of its life and how it interacts with the atmosphere of Earth. 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 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. 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. What color is it really? As photographed from space during a spacewalk aboard the International Space Station in 2011, the bright Sun can be seen to appear white in color. 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. Think the Sun is yellow? Think again.
Discover the true color of our star and why it looks so different from Earth's surface. Sun's Light Spectrum The sun in space isn't the yellow ball we often imagine. Above Earth's atmosphere, it shines as a blinding white orb.
This phenomenon is rooted in the science of light and color. Sunlight is a mixture of all colors in the visible spectrum. When these colors blend, they create what we perceive as white.
A prism demonstrates this by breaking sunlight into a rainbow. Many people imagine the sun as yellow or orange, often depicted that way in art and media. However, the sun's actual color is white when viewed from space, without Earth's atmospheric interference.
This discrepancy between its true and perceived color results from scientific principles.