The impression that the sun is starkly white when it used to be more yellow has a number of likely contributing factors.
Convinced yet? You shouldn’t be. Jeff Rich, an astronomer and outreach coordinator at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, tellsthat he often encounters misconceptions about the color of the sun in his work with the public.
The impression that the sun is starkly white when it used to be more yellow has a number of likely contributing factors: the exposure or color balance imposed by digital camera images, for example. People also notice the sun appearing “orange or red as it sets,” Rich says, which is “due to the fact that we’re looking through more atmosphere the lower an object gets in the sky, and if we’ve got smog or smoke that’s going to add to the effect.
Here’s the unexpected part: Rich says “the sun does change color and brightness over time,” though not in a way that would be evident to the casual observer. Currently, it’s “in the ‘main sequence’ for several billion years, where it’s very slowly getting hotter and ‘bluer,’ but only marginally and not in a way that we could perceive.” So now if someone tries to tell you the sun has gone from yellow to white, you can reply, “It’s actually more blue than it used to be, idiot.
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