The Sun's Secret Green Identity Crisis

The Sun's Secret Green Identity Crisis
astronomy-memes, physics-memes, spectrum-memes, sun-memes, wavelength-memes | ScienceHumor.io

The sun's peak emission wavelength is around 500 nanometers, which falls smack in the green part of the visible spectrum. Yet somehow the sun appears yellow-white to us! This cosmic prank happens because the sun emits across the entire visible spectrum, and when all those wavelengths hit our eyes together—boom, we perceive white-ish light with a yellow tint (thanks atmosphere for the color filtering).

This historical gentleman's reaction is basically every astronomy student when they first learn this mind-blowing fact. Green sun?! Next you'll tell me the sky isn't actually blue! (Spoiler: it's not, it just scatters blue wavelengths more... but that's a meme for another day!)

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