Why Is There No Green Star?

There are red, blue, orange, white, and yellow stars, but why are there no green ones? Let’s explain.

There are stars in red, blue, orange, white, and yellow colors, but there are no green stars. To explain this phenomenon, we first need to explain how we see colors. When light hits an object, the object absorbs some of the light and reflects the rest. We perceive the color of the object thanks to the light that hits our eyes. Let me explain with an example: imagine a yellow pencil. The only reason we see the pencil as yellow is that the object absorbs all other colors except yellow.

Now, let’s return to our main topic. All stars shine in a certain color depending on how hot they are, but this doesn’t mean that stars emit light of a single color. Stars emit light in several colors (keep this information in mind, it’s important). I’d like to explain with an example. A red star also emits light in other colors, but it appears red because red is the color it emits the most.

There are seven colors in a rainbow (actually, it would be more accurate to say these are the colors we can perceive), and green is right in the middle. Now we’re getting close to the answer to our question… Green is right in the middle of the spectrum we can see. This means that light close to green (as I mentioned above, a star doesn’t emit light in just one color) is also close to yellow and blue, so we end up seeing a kind of mixture of these, and therefore, this light mostly appears white.