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Star actually have colors (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 year ago by SnotBubble@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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While camping, I noticed that if you look long enough at almost any star, you start seeing some tiny, subtle colors in that star. Even crazier, they sometimes flicker between more colors. In my case orange, blue and something like cyan.

Besides constellations, what else could you observe regarding starts, with the naked eye?

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[–] Slice@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You can only get this effect in the center of your visual field due to the organization of your retina where you have color vision. The rest of your eye is much more sensitive to light so you can see dim stars more easily in your periphery by looking away from them a bit. Maybe you can use your own biology to help enjoy the night sky even more! If you get a friend, you can use colored pen caps and get them to hold them in your periphery and tell them what color it is. You don't be able to until they reach the color vision part of your visual field if you stay looking forward.

It's trippy, but your brain fills in color for you a lot of the time.