[MagicallyAdept]

Originally Posted by evman150

Like the others said, it's Mars. Other bright objects are a different colour. The brightest being Venus which is yellow, Jupiter which is yellowy as well, and Sirius which is bluey.

For an interesting example of contrast in celestial object colour, look at the constellation of Orion, and observe the two brightest stars, the brightest in the top left and the second brightest in the bottom right. Betelgeuse (A Ori) is a red very cool supergiant star on its way out while Rigel (B Ori) is a blue, hot main sequence star. The different colours can be readily observed.

To get an idea of what I mean by "cool" and "hot", the Sun is average, and it's temperature is ~5800K. A Ori is cool, meaning its temperature is in the neighbourhood of 3500K. B Ori is on the hot side, coming in at ~10000K. So it can be used as a rule that stars in the sky (not planets) that are red are cool, yellow/orange are medium, blue/white are hot.

Sorry, I guess what I wrote has nothing to do with the OP's question. Oh well. I just love stellar evolution and stellar astronomy in general!

i work in the lighting industry and a hockey forum was the last place i though i would hear anyone talking about colour temperature and kelvins but hey i was wrong. i originally thought you had your numbers the wrong way around but i see you are talking about the actual temperature of the stars. in the film industry we use colour temperature so the higher the K, the cooler the light, weird hey? but i agree astronomy is interesting.

Magic