(ORDO NEWS) — If you ask children or even adults to draw the sun, then they will most likely reach for a yellow pencil or felt-tip pen, which will be used to draw a yellow circle.
This is not surprising, since we, living on Earth, see the Sun quite often, and it is yellow. But is it really that simple?
The human eye is a poor optical instrument
We, as the inhabitants of the Earth, see the Sun as yellow because of the dense atmosphere of the Earth, which partially absorbs, refracts and scatters light from the star.
But what about those satellite images that also show a yellow Sun? Space photos are often processed, giving the Sun the recognizable yellow color that we are all so used to.
The true color of the sun is white
You don’t need to fly into space to verify the truth of this statement, you just need to know the temperature of the star’s surface.
It is no secret that stars behave roughly in accordance with the physics of black body radiation, such as, for example, an iron rod.
As the temperature rises, the rod (like the stars) changes color from brown to red, orange, yellow, white and blue.
The hottest stars in the universe, with extreme luminosity and temperatures up to 50,000 degrees Kelvin, are blue giants.
Our Sun, with a surface temperature of 5,778 degrees Kelvin, belongs to the class of “yellow dwarfs” (temperatures between 5,000 and 6,000 degrees Kelvin), which, despite the name, are actually white. Therefore, being in space, you would see a pure white star.
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