Sun Colour White

The color of the sun is actually white, though it may look yellow. If you were to get close enough to the sun, which you can't actually do, you'd be able to see its true color. Learn what color the Sun is and why it appears different colors from Space, the Earth, and in photographs.

The sun emits light across all the visible colors in the electromagnetic spectrum fairly evenly. When these come together united in sunlight the sun appears white. 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 peak wavelength in a spectrum also generally determines an object's apparent colour. So, for example, cooler stars appear red and hotter stars appear blue, with orange, yellow and white stars in between.

For the Sun, the spectrum actually peaks at a wavelength that we would normally describe as green. 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. Within the visible spectrum, the sun emits all colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. While its peak emission is in the blue-green part of the spectrum, it emits significant amounts of all visible wavelengths.

When these colors are present in roughly equal proportions, they combine to form white light. Therefore, an observer viewing the sun from space would perceive it. Here are all the visible colors of the Sun, produced by passing the Sun's light through a prism -like device.

The spectrum was created at the McMath-Pierce Solar Observatory and shows, first off, that although our white -appearing Sun emits light of nearly every color, it appears brightest in yellow. The Sun appears yellow, but its colour depends on how the atmosphere filters its light. Discover what makes it so changeable and surprising.

What color is the Sun? The Sun as seen from the International Space Station. Short answer: White. Long answer: Most people think of the Sun as yellow, but it only seems yellowish to us because of the Earth's atmosphere.