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by MARIA BEATRICE VILLASANA | Science Correspondent
The Sun is one of the stars of Goldilocks planet also known as Earth that has an average distance of 93 million miles or 1 astronomical unit from our planet. The Sun appears yellow from our perspective here on earth but according to astronomical observations and studies, the real hue of this star is white.
It is White in outer space as seen from the view of NASA's Space Station. Light coming from the sun is called white light that consists of the seven colors of the rainbow combined.
It seems yellowish to us or red/orange during sunset and sunrise because of the Earth's atmosphere. The Earth's atmosphere has this thing called "Scattering".
Atmospheric scattering or Rayleigh Scattering named after the 19th-century British physicist Lord Rayleigh is the scattering of light by particles small enough to render the effect selective so that different colors are deflected through different angles.
In other terms, this is where the sunlight scatters when it reaches the Earth's atmosphere with air molecules that cause colors like blue, which have a shorter wavelength than yellow, to scatter.
This is why the sky is blue because of the colors that scatter from the atmosphere and the sun is yellow because it has a longer wavelength.
As the sun is getting nearer to the horizon
more air molecules are produced that cause a scattering for more colors with short wavelengths to show from the sky leaving us with yellow, red, and orange.
But in outer space, the sun is pure white since no atmosphere will scatter its light.
(https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1164/how-big-is-the-solar-system/)
(The Sun comes into our sight as yellow https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/mobile/2013/07/03/what-is-the-color-of-the-sun/)
(https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/what-color-sun)
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