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Wednesday 14 December 2016

The Universe in 101 words: What colour is the Sun?


Looking for something? How about original space art, an art print, or laptop skin, designed by a (slightly) mad scientist?


The Sun isn't yellow.

We see the Sun from under 100 kilometres of (mostly) nitrogen atmosphere. Nitrogen molecules scatter light from the violet end of the spectrum more, which gets spread across the entire sky, turning it blue/violet (our eyes see the blue better). 

So the Sun looks yellow to us because its image has lost the blue, indigo, and violet colours. 

Sunlight passes through more air at sunset, scattering out every colour except red, making sunsets red. Pure sunlight contains every colour, and looks white to human eyes - but analyse it...

…and the strongest colour is green


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