Sep 15(ABC):A former NASA Astronaut confirmed that the colour of the sun is actually white and not yellow.
Scott Kelly confirmed the space fact on Twitter after it was shared by an account called “Latest in Space”.
While it is actually white, the dwarf star appears yellow because of the earth’s atmosphere. Therefore, once a person surpasses the atmospheric layer of our planet, the sun appears white.
According to NASA, Earth’s atmosphere scatters blue light better than red.
“The slight deficit in blue light means the human eye perceives the colour of the Sun as yellow.”
NASA also explains that all x-ray and gamma-ray radiation is filtered out before it reaches us on the ground.
As sunlight passes through different layers of the atmosphere, more and more blue light scatters and a greater amount of red light, which has the longest wavelength reaches our eyes. This is also why the sun and even the sky appear redder during sunset.
Netizens left lots of comments below the astronaut’s post. While some agreed, others were still sceptical and some responded sarcastically.
“I mean, he can be lying just to lie. can anyone else confirm this?” a sceptical user wondered.
Trolling flat-earthers, another said: “What about Earth, is it flat or globe Cause some people believe in flat earth theory!”
A user even added a discussion about the colour green saying that maybe human eye evolution makes it look yellow when it’s actually green.
Another user whose description said he was a physicist responded to the comment about the green sun saying: “It peaks in green, yes. But the colours on either side are about the same amount so they all add to white. This would be (mostly) true even if we could see a wider amount of the E-M spectrum as long as our vision sensitivity also peaks in green.
