Is our Sun yellow in color? From our childhood and in schools, we have been learning that the color of our sun is yellow. According, to a study, the sun isn’t yellow, it is white in color.
It is just an illusion that is caused by the Earth’s atmosphere which makes us believe that the sun is yellow. The light emitted from our sun consists of all the colors mixed together, which we can see as white outside the earth’s atmosphere in space.
Therefore it gives us an illusion of yellow color as the atmosphere of the earth interferes when the light of the sun hits the earth.
In fact, our sun emits all the colors which are not visible with our naked eye. This has a lot to do with the biophysics of our eyes. When the light reaches the earth the true color of the sun is barely noticeable, we are unable to see the right color as our eyes are not adapted to see such light.
For example, if we look at the night sky and if our eyes are not adapted to the darkness not all the colors will be visible. So the correct color of the light emitted from a distant star is also not visible to us.
The light from the distant or nearby star is also scattered due to the atmosphere of the earth because of which all the stars with the same color and temperature can also be seen as orange-ish, greenish, or in different colors depending upon the character of its temperature.
In space, we can see the light emitted from the sun is white in color that is because there is no air, no atmosphere to interfere with, whereas on earth, we see our sunlight as yellow.
Astronauts in the space station have seen our sun emitting white light. The only reason behind this mystery is the color photons around the atmosphere like blue color photon which bounces more than the other color like orange and yellow.
So when each color hits our eyes at the same time it supposed to appear as white. But the air molecule of the earth’s atmosphere interacts with it and tends to scatter the blue light’s wavelength. Due to which we see light as yellow.
The wavelength of colors that exist in our atmosphere plays an important role in understanding the chemistry of light. In the daytime, the blue photon light’s wavelength is scattered more which makes us see a yellow light and in noon-time, we can see a little bit of white light.
Simultaneously, during sunset, the blue photon (light) is even more scattered which makes our sky look red or orange-ish color.
During the sunset, sunlight passes through the horizon and the light has to pass through more air molecules that are scattered around, thereby leaving all the other colors to appear as red, yellow, and orange.
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