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Star actually have colors (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago by SnotBubble@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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While camping, I noticed that if you look long enough at almost any star, you start seeing some tiny, subtle colors in that star. Even crazier, they sometimes flicker between more colors. In my case orange, blue and something like cyan.

Besides constellations, what else could you observe regarding starts, with the naked eye?

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[–] Candelestine@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/GreenSun.html

Eye sensitivity comment is good point too, I didn't think of that.

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I don't quite get why they say 'the Sun's visible output peaks in the green'. And immediately follow that up with a diagram where the peak is somewhere between blue and cyan... Or are my eyes off?

[–] Candelestine@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Yea I don't really get it either. My physics is not particularly strong though.

[–] tpyo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The 2nd image, to me, seems to show that green has a wider amount of emitted green light:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/SID/activities/images/solar_spectrum_composite.jpg

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 2 points 11 months ago

I hope I don't sound too argumentative, because I really don't actually care too much about the exact color of sunlight. But I think this is a diagram from earth's perspective. It has these dents in the longer wavelengths where certain frequencies get absorbed by elements it traveled through, and the UV is filtered out. Both indicators it went through the atmosphere.

[–] InputZero@lemmy.ml 2 points 11 months ago

What they're really saying is that the dominant wavelength our sun emits is around 500 nm. Which by definition is green light. Astronomers also call everything heavier than helium a metal, which isn't true but that's how they work.