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Volume: 6 | Article ID: art00050
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The Colors of the Stars
  DOI :  10.2352/CIC.1998.6.1.art00050  Published OnlineJanuary 1998
Abstract

The brightness and colors of the stars have fascinated observers of the night sky for millennia. It is difficult however, to portray the depth and amount of visual information of the heavens on actual displays. This paper applies principles of reproduction, color science, and perception, to generate attractive and information-rich starfield images.Although the casual appearance of stars is bluish-white, starlight actually ranges along the entire black-body locus. Scotopic (night) vision cannot see the full color that would result, but we can use color as a natural way to depict the various types of stars and their surface temperature. This is done in three steps. First, a relation between the astronomical color index of a star (the difference in power between two historically established spectral bands) and the star's effective surface temperature is obtained. From this black body temperature, colorimetric coordinates are calculated. Finally, the colorimetric values are converted to device coordinates for the display.

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Thor Olson, "The Colors of the Starsin Proc. IS&T 6th Color and Imaging Conf.,  1998,  pp 233 - 240,  https://doi.org/10.2352/CIC.1998.6.1.art00050

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Copyright © Society for Imaging Science and Technology 1998
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