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There are five star colors: blue, white, yellow, orange, and red. The hottest stars are blue, with temperatures around 25,000 K. Red is the color of the coldest stars, which have surface temperatures of approximately 3,000 K.
A simple chart for classifying the main star types using Harvard classification. In astronomy, stellar classification is the classification of stars based on their spectral characteristics.
From dim red to brilliant blue, stellar colors span the spectrum—and reveal how much any star brings the heat
The following stars, all plotted on our Star Dome map (see page 34), run the gamut of spectral groups and are all visible on an early April evening.
Below, is a simple star color temperature chart that provides examples of some of the most well-known stars in the night sky, and their colors.
Two different factors affect what color a star is. First, movement has a significant impact. As an object moves away from you, it “redshifts,” moving farther to the lower end of the color spectrum.
Stars exist in a range of colors: red, orange, yellow, green, white and blue with red being the coolest and blue being the hottest. A star’s color indicates it’s temperature, composition and relative distance from earth. Its luminosity indicates its size, the brighter it is, the larger it is.
If you study this plot, or one of the interactive blackbody radiation demonstrators we used in the last lesson, you can prove to yourself that the color of a star provides a fairly accurate measurement of its surface temperature.
Go to this interactive simulation from the University of Colorado to see the color of a star changing as the temperature is changed. The hottest stars have temperatures of over 40,000 K, and the coolest stars have temperatures of about 2000 K.
Yet star color is an important indicator for astronomers; the color is an indication of a star’s surface temperature at its photosphere . A star’s photosphere temperature dictates its color . It turns out that the hotter stars are whiter and cooler stars are redder.