In the recent telescope image released by NASA, some stars seem to be either more “warm toned” or “cool toned”. I’m just brainstorming but is it related to the distance from Earth? Or perhaps it’s dependent on the elemental makeup. Are they actually different colors or do we just perceive them that way? TIA
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Stars do have different colors depending on their size and surface temperature.
Small, dim stars and bloated dying stars are cool and glow a deep red or orange.
Healthy middling stars like our sun are a light yellow or brilliant white.
Giant stellar infernos much larger than our sun overheat and turn a blazing blue.
You can see a few red stars in the night sky – the nearby-ish red giant star Betelgeuse is visibly red to the naked eye if you can find it.
For images of objects very far from earth you have a second redshift effect that makes *everything* drop down into the red end of the spectrum if it’s far enough away. The light has stretched out over the many billions of years it has traveled the vast expanse and now appears red.
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