Learn the Facts about Stars

Despite what you will hear in TV commercials, poems, and songs, you can't see 1,000,000 stars … anywhere. There aren't enough close enough and bright enough. On a very exceptional night, with no Moon and much from any source of lights, an individual with excellent eyesight could also be ready to see 2000-2500 stars at anybody time. (Counting even this small number still would be difficult.). Therefore the next time you hear someone claim to possess seen 1,000,000 stars within the sky, just appreciate it as artistic license or exuberant exaggeration – because it isn’t true! We are familiar with on things that are red as hot and people that are blue as cool. Itis often not entirely unreasonable since a red, glowing fireplace poker is hot and ice, especially in glaciers and polar regions, can have a bluish cast. But we are saying that only because our everyday experience is restricted. Heated objects change colour as their temperature changes, and red represents the rock bottom temperature at which heated objects can glow in the light. Because it gets hotter, the colour changes to white and ultimately to blue. Therefore the red stars you see within the sky are the “coolest” (least hot), and therefore, the blue stars are the hottest! Although there are scattered claims for stars that appear green, including Beta Librae (Zuben Eschamali), most observers don't see green in any stars except as an optical effect from their telescopes, alternatively an idiosyncratic quirk of private vision and contrast. Stars emit a spectrum (“rainbow”) of colours, including green, but the human eye-brain connection mixes the colours during a manner that rarely if ever comes out green. One-color can dominate the radiation, but within the range of wavelengths and intensities found in stars, greens get mixed with other colours, and therefore the star appears white. For stars, the overall colours are, from lower to higher temperatures, red, orange, yellow, white, and blue. So as far because the human eye can tell, there are not any green stars.

Avinash Sinha 

Birla School, Pilani