Why NASA observes the Sun in different wavelengths
Wednesday, January 23, 2013 - 06:30
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org)—Taking a photo of the sun with a standard camera will provide a familiar image: a yellowish, featureless disk, perhaps colored a bit more red when near the horizon since the light must travel through more of Earth's atmosphere and consequently loses blue wavelengths before getting to the camera's lens. The sun, in fact, emits light in all colors, but since yellow is the brightest wavelength from the sun, that is the color we see with our naked eye—which the camera represents, since one should never look directly at the sun. When all the visible colors are summed together, scientists call this "white light."