What Color is the Sun?

The red hues of sunrise at dawn, the golden white shimmer towards noon or the brilliant tangerine winter sunset over a snowy field, the Sun never ceases to awe us with its display of colours!? When asked about What is the color of sun, a reflexive response would be, ‘yellow’ or ‘white’! You might also answer ‘red’ or ‘orange’ if ‘dawn and dusk’ pop up in your mind. But you are actually wrong!. Sun, which is in the centre of the solar system is brilliantly white coloured. We have learnt that the sun is a hot red mass. Due to the earth’s atmosphere, the sun appears in various colours like yellow, red and orange. Now let us learn What is the color of sun.

Sunlight: A Mixture of Colours

Let us demonstrate the colours of sunlight through a small activity.

Refraction of sunlight through Glass

Refraction of sunlight through Glass

  • Take a glass tumbler or a transparent bowl full of water.
  • Place it in a position such that direct sunlight falls on it through the window.
  • Fix the white paper on the floor as shown in the figure such that the rays of sun passing through the glass tumbler falls on the sheet.

We can observe on the paper that the sunlight is split into a spectrum of colours like a rainbow, every colour in VIBGYOR pattern i.e., violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red can be seen. The conclusion drawn here is that sunlight is nothing but a mixture of seven colours. These seven colours combine to form the white light. Red has the longest wavelength and blue has the shortest wavelength in the spectrum.

The shorter waves from the sun; the blue colour light, strikes air molecules in the upper atmosphere and gets scattered easily. Hence the sky appears blue in colour. Colours like violet and indigo are absorbed in the upper layer along with blue colour leaving behind red, orange and yellow light. When these wavelengths of light interfere with the particles of atmosphere like dust, they get scattered and appear in yellow and red colour prominently. 

To Know Awesome Facts About The Sun, Watch The Below Video:

Why Does the Sunlight Appear Red, Orange or Yellow?

When the sun rays enter the earth, they get distorted by the earth’s atmosphere including air molecules, dust and smoke. We know that different colours of the spectrum have different wavelengths. The short-wavelength blue and violet are scattered more than colours of the lower end of the spectrum which are less easily scattered.

Noon

Noon

If the sun is overhead in the sky, the rays suffer the least amount of interference because the distance covered by them is the least at that point in time. Consequently, the blue light is scattered and the sky appears blue whereas the rays of the sun appear yellow.

 

Morning and Evening

Morning and Evening

During the sunrise and sunset, the sun is near the horizon due to which the light rays have to travel a longer distance through the atmosphere. As a result, there is more interference which causes more scattering of light. Consequently, most of the colours, including the blue as well as the yellow are scattered leaving the red light. Hence, the sunlight appears orange and red during dawn and dusk.

Frequently Asked Questions – FAQs

Q1

How Do Scientists Study the Sun?

Studying the Sun and how it affects the Earth is a complicated process. To successfully do this, scientists approach the problem in many ways. Scientists study the Sun using computers to predict what the Sun may do in the future. Others build special instruments which look at the Sun and make measurements; they use computers both to collect and later make sense of the measurements.

Q2

How Heavy is the Sun?

Although we cannot weigh the Sun with a scale, we can calculate its weight by analysing the way it affects other objects, such as the Earth. The Sun’s mass is 1.989 × 10^30 kg. It is impossible to calculate the Sun’s true weight because the weight is relative to the local gravity. As the sun is its own source of local gravity it, therefore, does not sit on something else and cannot be weighed.

Q3

How does the Sun affect communications?

In our technology-based economy, we depend heavily on satellites and various forms of high-frequency communication systems. Communications and navigation systems used by commercial airliners can be affected by geomagnetic storms which are caused by solar activity. Geomagnetic storms can actually cause the atmosphere of Earth to expand affecting satellite orbits. An excellent review of these issues can be found at the Space Environment Laboratory (NOAA).

Watch the video and solve the previous year questions in the chapter The Human Eye and Colorful World Class 10

Stay tuned with BYJU’S to learn many such interesting concepts in Physics.

Test Your Knowledge On Sunlight White Coloured!

Comments

Leave a Comment

Your Mobile number and Email id will not be published.

*

*

close
close

Play

&

Win