How Does the sun get its Color?

How does the sun get its color when it gives color to everything else? It can't give color to itself.
- Angela (age 343)
Ooltewah,Tennessee

Hi Angela,

The Sun does make its own color! It glows! 

It's able to do this because the Sun is incredibly hot. It's temperature is almost 10,000 degrees Farenheit. Temperature is a measure of the average velocity of the particles that make up an object, which means that the particles which make up the Sun are moving around really fast. Those Sun particles also have electric charge. When particles having electric charge get bumped around, they emit a light wave. So all the charged particles in the Sun are bumping into each other with high speed, and as a consequence emitting a whole bunch of light.  

The color of light emitted by hot objects depends on how hot it is. Anything which has a temperature greater than absolute zero (-460 degrees Farenheit) emits light... including you yourself! Most things which we encounter in our daily lives are at a temperature which makes them emit a color of light that we're not able to see (called infrared light). The Sun, however, is at a temperature that allows its particles to emit colors called visible light, which is what our eyes can detect. Visible light contains all the colors we're able to see, but when they all mix, our eye sees interpret it as white. If you were to stare at the Sun (which I do not advise!), it would look white.

So, white light emited by the Sun lands on Earth. Why do things here on Earth acquire different colors? When you look at an object, you see light that has hit that object and reflected back into your eye. Objects don't reflect all colors equally. For example, leaves absorb red and blue light, reflecting only green. So you see that leaves are green.

-Courtney K

There is a nice article on color vs temperature at    LeeH

(published on 04/23/2015)