color of sun

Theresa Wiegert theresaw at oso.chalmers.se
Wed Feb 19 09:56:33 CET 2003


Don Rosa:
>>>...And the sun should be yellow. I've always wondered, even when I was
a kid, why people think the sun is yellow. I think it's only because when
we're lil' kids with crayons we don't want to leave the sun white in our
drawings. And then we read our comic books with those yellow suns. Even my
dear Mort Wisinger Superman comics always referred to a "yellow sun". And
yet ol' Sol is plain ol' white (colorless).

Actually, the sun *is* yellow! It's classified as a G-star (spectraltype),
depending on its temperature and chemical composition. A warmer star would
be blue, and a colder red. A white star is somewhat warmer than our sun
(about 10.000 degrees, centigrades or Kelvin, as compared to about 6.000
degrees), for example Sirius (or one of them, Sirius is a double star, if
I'm not remembering incorrectly)

To be even more specific, sun is a G2 V star, but for those more
interested, this is a very good link:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/scienceques2002/20021011.htm

So there! We can continue to make our suns yellow, and stay scientific at
the same time! :)

/T
     _
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    / )   Theresa Wiegert                  theresaw at oso.chalmers.se
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