Stars general question

[Iron man]

Hi everyone,

I was wondering wich color suppose ro be a stars? Ive seen in many game stars of diferent colors even red. Dies that hust artistic or can existing?
Thx

[sythsillis]

There are red and blue stars all over but I believe they all look white from a distance. Perhaps someone with knowledge of astronomy could explain why.

[Marvin]

Red giants and dwarfs are probably cool enough to see the color. You can read a lot about stars at Wikipedia. Start here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star

[DaveK]

With the exception of brown dwarf's (which are so dim you can't really see them), all stars look white at first glance. However, if you look through a telescope or bino's and have other stars to compare them against you can see that some stars have a pinkish tinge and others bluish compared to 'yellowish ' stars. It's all to do with the surface temperature - 'red' Betelgeuse at Orion's 'armpit' (2500K) and the 'blue' Bellatrix at the 'shoulder' (18000K) in contrast with 'yellow' Sol (5800K) - are all white hot visually. If you use a spectroscope to analyse their light and the superimpose the visible spectrum over the top you can see where their maximum intensity lies compared to visible light . In the piccy below the white graph lines are the stars blackbody radiation profiles and the rainbows where the visible spectrum lies . . .

The first star is Betelgeuse (main intensity at red end of the visible spectrum), the second is Sol (peaks in the middle) and the third is Bellatrix (mainly in the blue)


[file]1044[/file]


But all three stars produce a significant amount of light right across the visible spectrum. So the effects in Sci Fi films and novels of red shadows and hellish red planetary settings are simply artistic licence! Except for Mars of course

Here's a quote I found that summarises what you actually see quite well: 'Most of the bright stars you see in the night sky are (class) B and A, and thus bluish in color. Thus, they "tune" your eyesight to that as the reference white, so when you look at Antares or Betelgeuse, they look quite reddish. In reality, both of those "red" are pale yellowish orange, a thousand degrees hotter and thus somewhat whiter than an incandescent bulb (or a "warm white" CFL).'





[Edited on 5-8-2015 by DaveK]

[Iron man]

Thx you for all these explanation