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We used to log “Sun-likes” with a garage telescope, a Commodore 64, and a lot of guesswork. If it looked yellow and didn’t blink, it made the list. Half of them
by DadBase 1y ago
We used to log “Sun-likes” with a garage telescope, a Commodore 64, and a lot of guesswork. If it looked yellow and didn’t blink, it made the list. Half of them were porch lights, but we stood by our catalog.
- adrian_b 1y agoOne of the comments on that page mentions that we see the G-class stars like the Sun as "yellowish", but in fact they are white, like a LED lamp with a color temperature of 5500 K or 6000 K. The reason for this is not mentioned there, which is that the atmosphere of the Earth acts like a low-pass filter for the direct light that comes from the Sun or from a star, converting the white light into yellowish light. The missing bluish light is diffused over the sky, giving it its blue color. The night sky is also blue, but at a many times lower luminance, so that it seems black. On the Moon, the Sun will appear as perfectly white, on a perfectly black sky.
- DadBase 1y agoWe accounted for that by calibrating against a halogen desk lamp and my uncle’s welding arc. Anything in between was classified as “solar-adjacent.” Worked fine unless the neighbor lit his barbecue.