Temperature
Temperature
You might be surprised to know that the colour of stars depends on their temperature. Now the hottest star is a bit weird because it’s blue. Our own Sun is classified as a yellow dwarf star. It has a surface temperature of about 5,800 Kelvin! You may be wondering “what is Kelvin”, Kelvin i Because of this temperature, the bulk of the light we see streaming from the Sun is yellow/white. Our Sun has been in the main sequence phase of its life for 4.5 billion years, and it’s expected to last another 7 billion years or so.
The hottest stars are the blue stars. These starts at temperatures of about 10,000 Kelvin, and the biggest, hottest blue supergiants can be more than 40,000 Kelvin. In fact, there’s so much energy coming off the surface of a blue star that many could actually be classified as ultraviolet stars; it’s just that our eyes can’t see that high into the spectrum.
The hottest stars are the blue stars. These starts at temperatures of about 10,000 Kelvin, and the biggest, hottest blue supergiants can be more than 40,000 Kelvin. In fact, there’s so much energy coming off the surface of a blue star that many could actually be classified as ultraviolet stars; it’s just that our eyes can’t see that high into the spectrum.