The true color of the Sun is white. This is a fact that may seem strange to anyone who has seen a blazing sunset. But the scientific data is conclusive: our star emits light in all colors of the visible spectrum almost uniformly.

When all these frequencies are added together, the result for the human eye is pure white. However, from the surface of the Earth, we rarely see this original color. This is because the atmosphere acts as a complex filter. Air molecules scatter short-wavelength light, such as blue and violet, better.

This phenomenon, known as ‘Rayleigh Scattering’, causes the Sun to appear yellow or orange. When the light has to pass through a thicker layer of air, as in the east or west, the scattering becomes so intense that only red and orange light reach us.

When the Sun is at its zenith, that is, at its peak in the sky, its light passes through the atmosphere almost perpendicularly, following the shortest path. Even in this case, some of the blue light is “sucked” from the original beam to color the sky, leaving the direct light slightly warmer.

This loss of blue is enough for the white light to lean toward yellow. Moreover, contrast also plays a role. Our eye perceives bright white light as pale yellow when it contrasts with the deep blue of the surrounding sky.

In space, outside the “prison” of the atmosphere, astronauts see the Sun as it is: a dazzling white sphere against a black background of swirling circles. Interestingly, other stars often appear white to us because their light is too weak to activate the cones, our color receptors.

Instead, the rods, which perceive only brightness, are activated. Only extremely bright stars, such as Betelgeuse (red giant) or Rigel (blue supergiant), manage to show their true color to the unaided eye.

Understanding this visual trick does not diminish the beauty of a sunset, but reminds us how much our environment transforms physical reality before it reaches our retinas. The sun remains a white star, which “disguises” itself as gold to give us the colors of life on Earth. /tesheshi.com/

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Source: prizrenpost