Why is the sun yellow?

Question

Why is the sun yellow?

Answer 1

why is fire "yellow" (the sun is a giant fire ball)  (so are the stars)

Answer 2

The colour of a star is directly related to its temperature.

Our sun, viewed outside our atmosphere, is actually pure white.  Its surface temperature is 5778 Kelvin.

If it were cooler than that (say around 4500 K) it would appear orange, and cooler yet (say 3500 K) it would be reddish.

Now as for why it appears yellow, lets go in small steps.

Sunlight is comprised of light of different colours / wavelengths.  When all these colours are combined as in normal sunlight, the light appears white.

But you can see the colours of sunlight in a rainbow (the splitting of sunlight into the different colours by tiny raindrops in the air acting as prisms).

The molecules of the upper atmosphere are just the right size and shape to actually block and scatter the blue wavelengths of sunlight.  That is what makes the sky blue.

When you remove blue light from white sunlight, you are left with more of the red and yellow wavelengths to reach our eyes.  Its that lack of some of the blue in sunlight that makes the sun appear yellowish to us.

Answer 3

Because God said so.

Answer 4

Seen from space the Sun appears white, because its surface temperature is 6000K.  It appears yellow here because the atmosphere scatters the blue component of the white light.  This makes the sky appear blue and the Sun the complementary colour of blue, which is yellow.

Answer 5

It isn't yellow, it's white (when seen through a telescope at a high altitude above the horizon). We only think it's yellow because the only time we can safely look at the Sun is when it's low in the sky and passing through the Earth's thick atmosphere, which colours it yellow.