Jun 07 2009
Sun’s Atmosphere
For sure, the Sun’s atmosphere has an influence on the light, but that has already been taken into account. I’m talking about what the Sun would look like when viewed from outer space.
It’s actually not that easy to determine the color of the Sun, because it depends on how we define the color of an object. If we look at the Sun’s spectrum (which is close enough to a blackbody) then we see that the peak is at about 500nm which is green. To be precise, all the colors are represented because there’s some intensity at every wavelength but since 500nm is the strongest component I’d go with the color green.
(Btw, this is also the reason why one of our photoreceptor cells has a peak at that color.)
Now, when it comes to what the human eye perceives it’s a whole different thing. For us, the Sun looks simply white. This is because the Sun is so bright that all 3 of our photoreceptor become saturated and it is impossible to distinguish between different colors.
Sometimes, the Sun looks yellow of reddish. But this is only because the scattering of shorter wavelengths in the atmosphere. Try looking at the Sun in space.
