diffrent color of stars?

Question

what is different about a star that apears reddish compared to a star that apears bluish.

I know that a blue flame is hotter a red flame but is there some other reason i.e. refraction,radiation???

Answer 1

Stars are dense hot balls of gas so their spectrum is close to that of a perfect thermal radiator, which produces a smooth continuous spectrum. Therefore, the color of stars depends on their temperature---hotter stars are bluer and cooler stars are redder. You can observe the star through different filters to get an approximate temperature. A filter allows only a narrow range of wavelengths (colors) through. By sampling the star's spectrum at two different wavelength ranges (``bands''), you can determine if the spectrum is that for a hot, warm, cool, or cold star. Hot stars have temperatures around 60,000 K while cold stars have temperatures around 3,000 K. The filter diagrams are shown below.
Here is source if u don't belive me in the 1st pargraph

Answer 2

Most people here are correct. It has to do with the temperature of the star mostly and on certain stars, also the make up of the gasses.

But there is one factor that no-one has mentioned. Red shift and blue shift.

Shortly, this happens when a star is either moving away from us or getting closer to us. The greater the speed of the star moving away from us, the greater the red shift factor. This happens because the frequency of the light that reaches us chances the faster it is going away from us. This has the effect of the star appearing more red. Analogous to a car passing you at high speed and driving away from you. The sound the car makes when approaching is higher than when it is going a way from you. The converse is true for stars moving towards us. They appear more blue.

Answer 3

The blue star is hotter than a red star. The red star is using mosly helium and will probably eventually cool to a white dwarf and then become a brown dwarf when it finally goes out. The blue star is more massive, will burn it's hydrogen quicker and hotter, go to helium, and go to more dense and dense material until it goes to Iron. At which point fusion will cease, the outside will collapse and rebound off of the now iron solid core, and explode into a supernova. Leaving behind a nebula that will coalesce and become a nursery for infant stars again.

Answer 4

You are right that different stars have different colors. These colors are related to effective temperature. Blue stars are hotter then white which are hotter then yellow (our Sun), which are hotter then Red. There is some complicated science behind it, but here is the jist of it. Temperature is related to how much energy is being input into the stuff you're heating. So the more energy you put in the hotter the stuff gets, the faster the little molecules in it move. The color that we observe is associated with the energy of the particles that are emitted (radiation). Low energy particles (photons) are red. High energy photons are blue. But the Sun which is yellow, doesn't just emit photons that have energies that correspond to yellow. It emits red and blue, and orange. But the majority of them are in yellow.

Its a complex thing to try to explain. Here is a couple of websites that might help:

http://outreach.atnf.csiro.au/education/senior/astrophysics/photometry_colour.html

http://cas.sdss.org/dr5/en/proj/advanced/color/

Answer 5

Cool stars are redder. Hot stars are bluer.

Think of a stove top cooker; as you turn it on, it's warm but no (visible) colour, then a dull red as it gets hotter, and a finally bright orange-red when its really hot. If you could continue to heat it, it's colour would get more and more intense as it approaches white hot, bluer and hotter (until it melts).

In the visible window of the electromagnetic spectrum that the human eye can perceive; we experience low frequency radiation as red and high as blue.

Answer 6

The elements contained in them. The following is the chart for the colour of stars containing elements in them.
Hydrogen (protium) / Hydrogen-alpha - red stars
Helium - reddish orange stars
Sodium - yellow stars
Magnesium - green stars
Hydrogen (deuterium) / Hydrogen-beta - greenish blue stars
Hydrogen (tritium) / Hydrogen-gamma - blue stars
Calcium - Indigo and Violet Stars
There is no reason like refraction and radiation. Refraction is related to as why the stars twinkle.

Answer 7

Superstar_ice_bunny has it right. The only partial exception to this is carbon stars. These are cool stars that appear even redder because of absorption by the clouds of carbon compounds around them.

Answer 8

It has to do with the particles in the atmosphere combined with the angle the light enters the atmosphere. The atmosphere acts like a prism and minor striations in the elements cause the light to scintillate.

Answer 9

The only reason for the color difference is temperature. There is no other reason.

Answer 10

Depending on where they are in their life cycle, they will vary in the types of visible light they emit along with other rays not in the visible spectrum.