“The sun is yellow.”

It's a common artistic convention and everyday observation to see the sun depicted as a vibrant yellow, a perception deeply ingrained in our minds from childhood drawings to popular culture. Yet, despite this widespread belief and our daily experiences, the true color of our star isn't yellow at all. In fact, if you were to view the sun from outside Earth's atmosphere, it would appear as a brilliant, pure white.

Scientifically speaking, the sun is a powerful emitter of light across the entire visible spectrum. This means it produces all the colors of the rainbow—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—in roughly equal amounts. When these numerous wavelengths of light combine, our eyes and brains interpret this mixture as white. It’s similar to how a television screen uses red, green, and blue pixels (Review) to create a full spectrum of colors, including white, when all are illuminated together.

The reason we often perceive the sun as yellow, orange, or even red, particularly during sunrises and sunsets, is entirely due to Earth's atmosphere. As sunlight travels through the air, it encounters countless tiny particles and gas molecules. These particles preferentially scatter shorter wavelengths of light, such as blue and violet, a phenomenon known as Rayleigh scattering. This scattering is what makes our sky appear blue. When the sun is high in the sky, some blue light is scattered away, leaving the remaining light to appear slightly yellowish. However, at sunrise and sunset, the sunlight has to travel through a much greater thickness of atmosphere, scattering away even more of the blue and green light and allowing the longer wavelengths—reds and oranges—to reach our eyes, creating those beautiful, warm hues.