If you ask any child to draw a picture of the sun as he sees it, you will find that some paint it yellow, and some paint it white.
These impressions about the color of the sun do not only apply to children, as adults also always argue that its color is yellow, while some say it is white, but what do scientists say about the color of the sun?
Scientist W. Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Solar Energy Observatory has a different opinion, telling the Washington Post, “If you could look at the sun directly, you would see it green.”
He adds, “When you look at the sun, it contains enough different colors, and it is so bright that everyone’s eyes see it brightly, so the sun appears to us as white.”
Pesnell explains that what he sees as yellow has to do with “how the light is scattered,” especially when we’re looking at it from 93 million miles away.
He explains that molecules in the air redirect the blue and violet wavelengths of sunlight, which allows more of the “yellows and reds” to be more visible to our naked eyes.
And Besnell goes on to say that as day turns into night, sunlight must pass through a thicker atmosphere, so the blue tones in the sky scatter, showing us colors of red and orange at sunset.
Simply, Besnell said, “It is a green star that appears white because it is very bright, and it can appear in yellow, orange, or red, depending on what the Earth’s atmosphere shows us.” Color equals temperature – the hotter a star is, the more blue light it emits, while cooler stars appear red.”
The sun’s temperature exceeds 27 million Fahrenheit.
