Stellar light

I'm 99.9999% that this is stupid question. You've been warned.

Suppose the our white sun was a different, like red or blue; would that affect how things look on earth?

Yes, I know that the color of a star indicates how hot it is. But for the sake of this question, let's ignore how far a different colored sun would need to be from earth, how that would affect the seasons due to greater orbit, etc.

Factoring in the fact that the sun is a blue or red star, would that change our visibility on earth? Would the color color of the sky appear different? Would rainbows be the same?

Originally posted by vivify
I'm 99.9999% that this is stupid question. You've been warned.

Suppose the our white sun was a different, like red or blue; would that affect how things look on earth?

Yes, I know that the color of a star indicates how hot it is. But for the sake of this question, let's ignore how far a different colored sun would need to be from earth, how that wo ...[text shortened]... ility on earth? Would the color color of the sky appear different? Would rainbows be the same?

If it were redder, it would make the sky and everything else look redder. It wouldn't affect rainbows significantly although the red end might be brighter, you probably wouldn't notice.
Our eyes are extraordinarily good at compensating so you probably wouldn't notice much difference with every day objects.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If it were redder, it would make the sky and everything else look redder. It wouldn't affect rainbows significantly although the red end might be brighter, you probably wouldn't notice.
Our eyes are extraordinarily good at compensating so you probably wouldn't notice much difference with every day objects.

You can see some of that with photo's using different temperatures, I think the sun produces something like 5000 degree color temp and the higher that number the closer to blue it makes. Like Sirius is pretty blueish with a color temp of over 9000 degrees so stuff would take on a bit of a bluish hue under those skis.

Originally posted by twhitehead
If it were redder, it would make the sky and everything else look redder.

Wouldn't Earth's atmosphere continue to filter out the red light? Or would a red star just have too much red light for Earth to filter it out completely?

Originally posted by vivify
Wouldn't Earth's atmosphere continue to filter out the red light? Or would a red star just have too much red light for Earth to filter it out completely?

I would expect whatever gets to earth to be redder overall than it is now ie a percentage gets filtered out, so the more you have originally the more gets through in the end.