The atmosphere bends the light coming from the sky making the sky blue and the sun yellow. So what color is the sun really, if viewed from space?
The Sun isGreen.
That link is to a thread in the Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board. Later in the thread, after further investigation and reworking of his apparatus, George says “It is looking white at this point. There was some fringe blue that did not quite get in the mix so I suspect there is some hope for a bluish white or a cyanish white stellar host. It is likely going to be subtle and, thus, much more effort will be required. Shucks.”
So, stay tuned.
The sun is a class G star, which means that it really is yellow when viewed through vacuum. I’m not sure if the amount of blue light that gets scattered away to make our sky blue makes the sun appear a bit more yellow than it is, or if it isn’t enough to be noticed.
Actually, even through the atmosphere, the Sun is pretty white. It only looks yellow by comparison with the blue of the sky, but if you block out the blue, the sunlight that remains is rather colorless. For comparison, when you look at the Moon or Venus (both of which are rather colorless themselves), you’re seeing reflected sunlight, and nobody ever calls either of those objects anything other than white.
Can you even have a green star? I don’t know much about astronomy, but I would have assumed most stars would be either red, blue, or white, just because they probably produce light over a wide part of the spectrum. I mean, if the electromagnetic radiation produced by a star overlaps the visible spectum at the high frequencies and extends up into the ultraviolet, it looks blue. If it overlaps the visible spectrum at the low frequencies and extends down into the infrared, it looks red. If it overlaps the whole visible spectrum, it looks white. To get green, you’d have to have radiation only in a very narrow band of frequencies in the middle of the visible spectrum. (Or at least, much higher intensity over that very narrow band of frequencies.)
Maybe this isn’t that uncommon, I don’t know. Like I said, I’m not an astronomer. But I’d certainly find it surprising to learn the sun is green. I’m guessing it’s probably white.
What about a blue moon? 
But seriously, I’ve never heard venus called anything other than yellow.
All stars, including the Sun, radiate across a fairly wide spectrum. When the predominant output is to one end or the other of the spectrum (and going into the infrared or ultraviolet beyond the visible specturm), the star appears blue/violet or red/orange. Ones whose radiation is fairly evenly spaced appear to be producing white light, the same effect with an additive spectrum as mixing red, green, and blue to produce black in the subtractive spectrum.
G stars tend to be white with a yellowish cast; brighter stars (low-number F and A) tend to be white with a bluish cast. The Sun is therefore white with a yellowish cast.
[Maybe a hijack]Wouldn’t the color of the Sun be “white” by definition? That is, wouldn’t eyes on any world probably evolve as to utilize the light from the nearest star in the most effective way – by developing vision centered on the same part of the spectrum where that star delivers the most radiation – and wouldn’t the aggregate/mean wavelength of that radiation end up being defined as “colorless” by those eyes when they developed a sentient brain behind them? [/hijack]
Dani
but the color we see on earth is modified somewhat by the atmosphere–hence the question in the OP: “what color is the sun really, if viewed from space?”
Also, “white” has at least two different meanings, even here. White noise means a broad spectrum of frequencies, all of which have about the amplitude–and the same principle can be applied to color. The color white, as we perceive it, may be modified by all sorts of enviromental conditions, as well as by our visual perception system.
In my telescope, unfiltered, it’s white, no question about it.
I looked out the window to get the answer to this question. Now I think I’ve gone blind! :eek:
Seriously, I look around and see all kinds of colors. Since I have no lights on this means those colors are refracted from the sun’s light. Light containing all those colors is white. I’ll buy the yellow tint, but green is only a result of manipulating a bunch of data which to me is not a color.
Aww :smack: I stopped following the thread in mid May. I should’ve tuned in for those later posts.
White in this circumstance means visual white - the color our eyes have evolved to consider “white”. Isn’t the sun’s color the basis of “whiteness”? Why wouldn’t the sun be anything but white?
Well, if you want the nitty gritty here’s the spectrum light emitted by the Sun, showing the true solar spectrum, and the solar spectrum that gets through the atmosphere. (I think that the locations of the colors is a wee bit skewed in that diagram, but it gives you the basic idea.)
The Sun emits light at all wavelength of the visible spectrum (all wavelengths, period). Its peak is in the green, but it also emits light of all colors of the rainbow (obviously, since, a rainbow is just sunlight.)
I think both spectra are interpreted by the human eye as bright white with a yellowish, rather than bluish tinge, because the Sun is bright, which reads to our eye is white and saturated, and emits slightly more long-wavelength (reddish) light than short wavelenght (bluish) light. The atmosphere only accentuates this slightly by peeling away a bit more blue light.
I answered this question when Noone Special asked it a few posts back–the color we see on earth is modified somewhat by the atmosphere–hence the question in the OP: “what color is the sun really, if viewed from space?” We did not evolve in space. 
It’s made outta people!
Oh, wait… the sun IS green. Right. Never mind.
I know that the sun is white but I always think of it as yellow. I think many people do. But yesterday I asked my 4 year old nephew what colour the sun is: ‘white’…
But, but… Superman gets his powers from a Yellow Sun… has this been a lie all along?! = )
Superman comes from another solar system which I guess must have had a yellow sun.