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A blue star is far hotter than a red one, so the color of a star is a thermometer reading.

Astronomy Facts, sourced to NASA Imagine the Universe.

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Anything glowing shifts its color with temperature, in the same way an iron bar in a forge goes red, then orange, then white. Stars follow the same rule, running from around three thousand degrees for a dull red one to tens of thousands for a blue one. Our sun sits in the middle and reads as white from space; it looks yellow from the ground only because the air scatters its blue light away, which is what makes the sky blue.

The claim comes from NASA Imagine the Universe.

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