What colour is the sun??

[Npl]

It never occured to me before, but yesterday I got some thoughts about lightning for a spacesim, and I just cant stop thinking about a particular issue.

Aslong as I remember I recognised the sun as yellow, be it watched from earth or space, be it in schoolbooks, games or movies. I know it would totally struck me if the Sun wouldnt be illustrated as Yellow Circle.

Yet if you consider that the Moon is appearing white, that only leaves 2 possible conclusions:
1) The moon is greyish and the light emmitted from the sun is white (From what I know [or think to remember] the light-spectrum of the sun effectively blends into a white colour)
2) the light emmitted from the sun is yellow and the moon absorbs yellow more than other colours (having some sort of violet as 'basecolour') - I dont think so

I mean I could imagine the air filtering and scattering the light could result into the sun appearing yellow when watched from earth, but from Space the Sun should always be white !

Am I missing something?

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

Isn't the sun just pure white?
If you have maximum RGB values it will give you a pure white light.
I assume the sun's light is on the X-Ray side of the light spectrum.

 

[nintenho]

Am I missing something?

The moon is basically a big ol' rock that is reflecting sunlight. It's only about 20% as bright as the sun though.

 

[Npl]

Isn't the sun just pure white?
If you have maximum RGB values it will give you a pure white light.
I assume the sun's light is on the X-Ray side of the light spectrum.

Actually I would think so, but Im just totally paralyzed its illustrated as yellow everywhere. You know it feels like knowing the Earth is a sphere, when its everywhere illustrated as flat entity with an abyss around it.

 

[evil]

The sun is yellow... I always thought the moon has a yellowish tint too actually. Our eyes also tend to automatically correct colors, things that look white may not actually be 100% white.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Is google such a difficult URL to type?
http://www.earthsky.com/shows/listenerquestions.php?date=20030929

CC

 

[Fruitfrenzy]

I would argue that there is no universal definition of white. Our eyes have evolved having the spectral sensitivity that they have (most sensitivity to green etc) becuase that is what is available from the sun.

With that in mind I would expect the sun to be considered white. Certianly in photography a natural colour balance generally approximates a sunny day.

 

[London Geezer]

Is google such a difficult URL to type?
CC

Don't know why, but everytime i try to go on googol, it doesn't work... Everyone talks about this googol thing, googol here googol there, but i just don't get it...

 

[nutball]

The Sun is green (solar spectrum peaks around 500nm IIRC). Certainly if you look at it through a thick enough neutral density filter it appears green.

 

[Kalin]

Looks like the Sun is actually pink.

 

[Diplo]

Just get a telescope and look at it to get a good, close up look. You'll then find it's actually black (along with everything else, actually).

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

The Sun is green (solar spectrum peaks around 500nm IIRC). Certainly if you look at it through a thick enough neutral density filter it appears green.

Maybe your ND filter isn't neutral

How much do you use a ND filter anyway?

CC

 

[nutball]

How much do you use a ND filter anyway?

I don't! We just found one lying around when we were clearing out some old stuff and decided to see what the world looked like through it!

 

[Npl]

Just get a telescope and look at it to get a good, close up look. You'll then find it's actually black (along with everything else, actually).

I knew something like this would come

Is google such a difficult URL to type?
http://www.earthsky.com/shows/listenerquestions.php?date=20030929

CC

Im actually not surprised it looks yellow from earth( read my first post ), but show me a view from space which has a pure white sun. Or name a movie that shows such a scene. I know I have never seen either as I would surely been shocked.
Its similar to the 'green glowing radioactivity' in comics, only that the yellow sun is way more persistant across all media.

 

[Fruitfrenzy]

Im actually not surprised it looks yellow from earth( read my first post ), but show me a view from space which has a pure white sun. Or name a movie that shows such a scene. I know I have never seen either as I would surely been shocked.
Its similar to the 'green glowing radioactivity' in comics, only that the yellow sun is way more persistant across all media.

Surely you are not using how it is shown in the media as a basis for deciding what colour it actually is?

As nutball said it peaks in green (which is why human eyes are most sensitive to green) and as a whole it is white (by definition). Given how bright the sun is at this range no view from space will show anything other than saturated pixels unless a lot of filtering has taken place. Once you start applying filters all bets are off in terms of determining the original colour.

In addition to that look at the colour of stars that are considered to be the same type as our sun and you will see they are white.

 

[Npl]

Surely you are not using how it is shown in the media as a basis for deciding what colour it actually is?

Nope, its just that I never thought of it and kinda accepted it as fact without raising doubts. With media I also meant shoolbooks and (pseudo-)science mags.

As nutball said it peaks in green (which is why human eyes are most sensitive to green) and as a whole it is white (by definition). Given how bright the sun is at this range no view from space will show anything other than saturated pixels unless a lot of filtering has taken place. Once you start applying filters all bets are off in terms of determining the original colour.

In addition to that look at the colour of stars that are considered to be the same type as our sun and you will see they are white.

I know about the perception of colour, I was talking about 'what we see' all along, not the intensity of wavelengths (some of which we cant see anyway). AFAIK the eye adjusted to the sunlight as pure white during evolution.

Anyway I looked around a bit and it seems that Hubble cant take direct shots from the sun and satellites that are capable need to use filters. So there are no 'human-vision' shots from sun.

 

[Guden Oden]

I'd say the sun's basically white, and the reason it appears yellow is because the atmosphere disperses some of its blue light, leaving the red and green components.

And I don't think our eyes are more sensitive to green because the sun might have a slight bias in that direction, but rather because so much of our world IS green, because of chlorophyll...

 

[AlNom]

I'd say the sun's basically white, and the reason it appears yellow is because the atmosphere disperses some of its blue light, leaving the red and green components.

Aye... I was just about to say the same thing.

If you point a camera or even a digital camera at the sun, wouldn't the intensity be too great to really get an accurate picture?

 

[soylent]

The sun is a nearly perfect black body at ~6000 K. If you consider a light bulb at a mere ~3000K to be white, surely the sun would be very white looking from space.

It could be interesting to note that as the intensity of the light source increases it has a tendency to look slightly more red-ish at a given colour temperature.

 

[Humus]

The moon is basically a big ol' rock that is reflecting sunlight. It's only about 20% as bright as the sun though.

20% as bright as the sun sounds way too much for the moon. Do you have any link to back that number up? If I were to guess I'd say at most like 3% or so.