What is the true colour of the Sun?

In primary school art classes across the country children will reach for a yellow colouring pencil 99 times out of 100 when it comes to drawing our solar system’s central star. But is the Sun actually yellow or are we being fooled?

Most people would agree that the Sun is yellow, we’ve all looked at it (indirectly!) at one point or another of our lives but that assumption is wrong.

The true colour of the sun is actually white… the reason for this is how light reacts with each other. Visible light (i.e. the colours we can see on Earth) is just a fraction of the true energies of light in the universe. Since the Sun is emitting light across all wavelengths it appears white.

So what about at sunrise and sunset when it definitely looks orange? That is the result of light bending as it hits Earth’s atmosphere. With the Sun low in the sky only its short-wavelength colours (green, blue and violet) are being scattered resulting in those orange tones.

Just like during the day when light travels through the atmosphere giving the sky its blue colour, with the Sun high the shortest wavelength is blue.

The colour also changes with cultures, for example in Japan the Sun is often coloured red rather than yellow.