Star light, star bright: is there a green star out tonight? Other than the
Sun, all stars are so far from Earth that they appear as points in the sky. They are mostly white, but sometimes noticeably
red or blue. This color typically relates to the temperature: blue stars are hotter than red stars. What about other colors? The
featured image is an illustration showing
WD J1330+6435, a
white dwarf star, surrounded by an accretion disk with gas and rocks orbiting the star. White dwarfs are
small, faint stars that are left over when a star like the Sun
exhausts its nuclear fuel. Astronomers
recently found that some white dwarf stars, despite their name, would appear
yellow, green, cyan, pink, or purple. In
these cases, trace elements that were accreted to these stars interact with the stellar atmosphere and shift its normally white color. But, alas! I wish I may, I wish I might, but they are too faint to
see tonight...