The true color of the sun

The Sun is “white,” but when viewed from Earth it appears slightly yellow due to an optical effect that occurs when its light passes through the atmosphere. let’s see…

In our eyes, there are cells that are sensitive to light, and they come in three “types,” so to speak: there are cells that respond to red light, others to green, others to green, and others to blue. However, it is possible for more than one type of cell to be activated at the same time, or even all of them to be activated at the same time. Then our eyes see white.

If we could look at the sun from a point in space, this is what would happen: sunlight would activate all these cells in our eyes, and we would see them as white.

However, no one looks at the sun from space except astronauts (the lucky ones!). We see it on the floor of the cow. There its light must have passed through all the gases in the atmosphere. This includes the famous “ozone layer”, which filters out some blue light and scatters it in all directions, which is why the sky is blue during the day.

Ultimately, the result is that the sunlight that reaches us is slightly depleted in blue, resulting in a “mixture” that our eyes perceive as slightly yellowish.