I like the idea of Chuck just minding his own business at his house and Neil just calls him at any time to explain random scientific concepts to him.

"the blue sky is stolen sunlight" Keeping that line locked in my brain.

Even when I know the concept ahead of time, Neil explains it way better than I do. I love to hear him teach.

I have worked in Spectroscopy for 38 years and still enjoy Mr. Tyson's explanations for Light. While his knowledge is vast, he speaks in clear Terms that virtually anyone can understand. It is a gift that few have.

That's the best explanation of "why is the sky blue" I've ever heard!

Teacher: why have you drawn the sun white? Me: Well, the atmosphere....

"The Sun is white." "Why you gotta do that?"

As a videographer I was always wondering as to why the video lights with higher kelvin were actually colder (blueish). Then I realized when we set higher kelvin on camera to get warmer (yellowish) colors was because we made the camera less sensitive to higher temperature and not because we were matching with the actual sunlight kelvin.

Child: "Mom, look at my drawing!" *shows a blank piece of paper* Mom: "What is this?" Child: "Sun."

This is not just great Physics. It’s great Chemistry between them.

I explained this in much simpler terms to my 4 year old daughter, and the look of awe and amazement on her face was the most beautiful thing I could ever see. I imagine that’s what Dr Tyson sees in lecture halls when he has to describe things to attendees as if they are 4 year olds.

I learned something 😂 Neil never fails to make science easy to understand and entertaining to listen to

Being into photography myself, I've replaced all of the bulbs in my home with 5000K "daylight" units with super high CRI. Even shooting through a phone camera the difference is immediately noticeable. I knew this was the case but didn't know the "science" behind it. This helped a lot!

Combining science with humor is a great idea. This was educational and fun to watch. Thank you!

I myself am a photographer. And one part of our verbiage is to say the image is too hot. And what that means is that there is TOO much light entering the camera - which means the image is overexposed. So, here, learning about the heat of light, I appreciate Neil breaking down our use of color temperature. Very fun episode

I just love Dr. Tyson. As a textile designer myself, I had to study color science which I find fascinating. The most fundamental principle we had to understand is that there is no color without light, & the kind of light you have available to see, the sun, candlelight, electric or digital, will affect or determine what colors you see. And as the sun sets our perceptions of color become less saturated & gray.

Sun: *exists* Neil: Do not ever use the word yellow with me

Chuck's humor is 60% of the reason why I watch these videos.

I am so thankful for Chuck being in the show.he makes everything look interesting and enjoyable. I think i love science just because of him. Thank you Chuck and of course thank you so much Neil for doing this.

You missed a perfect opportunity to explain Kelvin temperature and how that affects color. It complements your discussion of cooler temp bulbs outputting warmer (perceptually) temp light. LOVE your videos!

I have to press pause and take a drink of water every time he says “ready to take it up a notch” in his podcast.

Neil: not everything is about race Chuck: first Jazz then the blues now they took the Sun too.

Bravo Neil. I am a lighting designer for theatre and you hit the nail on the head about the subject: the color of light.

I was so confused by the cold/warm reference when computer and smartphone screens started implementing night mode, it took me a while to understand what they were talking about. Thank you for clearing this.

"The Sun's not yellow, it's chicken." Bob Dylan

Dad was in the Navy. They had a saying. "Red sky at night sailors delight, red sky at morning sailor take warning" refers to the days weather and wind and rain. (Has something to do with clouds many miles away.) What I found was it is basically true. If the sunset was yellow, rain the next day, if deeper yellow rain with wind. Most times in the northern hemisphere. A video on this would be very interesting.

Videographer and editor here. The explanation of white balancing and hot/cold light is absolutely correct.

The last point is so interesting to me as a stage lighting engineer. We use color temperature to describe the quality of white we need from around 1500k (warm amber look) up to around 8000k (cool ice look) never thought about it before now but it’s weird that those temps are back to front!

So Chuck doesn't pay attention to the fact that the whole universe is literally black but gets mad because of tiny white spots ? xD

I absolutely love color theory! I must say, Neil did a great job with this explanation. Only one thing I would say a bit differently. For Rayleigh scattering (the process that causes the blue sky), the particles have to be significant smaller than the wavelength of visible light, not the same. Regardless, fascinating explanations!

Hey i just discovered startalk and now im hungry to learn more so thank you, I bought your book Neil and loving it 😊

As a part-time Professional Photographer, believe it or not my learning this a few years ago actually improved my editing/lighting skills!! Planning for 5500-5700 K(elvin), better known as 'Daylight' on bulbs, fixed a lot of issues I was having with proper exposure of subjects, etc. ... It was something simple yet mindblowing in it's overall effect for me! Now, even when I do cellphone photography, I will go into 'Pro' modes and correct white balance!

@startalk, as an artist I love your explanations of light, color, perception, and you even mentioned photographic white filtering. I just wish you had explained additive and subtractive color better. But great job!

Neil: The Sun is not yellow. Me as a kid: IT HAS ALL BEEN A LIE. I HAVE BEEN BETRAYED!

you have taught me so much on this universe and i continue to learn everyday, i loved and still do love Science and Math every since elementary school, and i now plan on pursuing astrophysics

I'm an artist and I am fascinated by the sky and atmospheric phenomena. I spend hours and hours looking at the sky and I notice things a lot of people probably don't. When I paint, I generally don't use photographs but rely on my memory. This drove one of my art instructors wild--"you can't do that, you need reference material." Who says? Anyway I noticed very early on that the sun is NOT yellow, it is white. I haven't yet succeeded in reproducing it to my satisfaction because of course you can't look directly at it, not for very long. It's a challenge and maybe some day I will master it.

I always know that when Neil says "consider the following"... I've gotta buckle up cause the next couple of minutes is gonna blow my mind.

Neil! I love your podcast! I've been a fan ever since you did the new Cosmos. Your thumbnails DON't do your channel justice!! I will make 1 or 2 thumbnails for you! No charge, it will be an honor! Thank you for educating us! Please let me know.

I was waiting for the spectrum of the sun and what wavelength is emitted with the greatest strength. That would be good for another video. I am sharing this with my college students. Great content as always both of you.

First, I would like to thank you for sharing your content (you rock NDT!). Secondly, I wanted to ask a question in regards to the Sun. What is the closest distance to safely look at the Sun without damaging your eyes at all? My guess would be approximately 2.5EU in distance to be able to directly look at the Sun with out injury to your eyes.

You know, it’s moments like these that make me happy I have the brain that I do because I had known that the sun was white without actually looking up anything up on it. I just simply observed the environment around me, the light it gave off and the sun itself to conclude that it was actually white. Hearing Tyson confirm that fills me with great confidence, thank you.

Always nice to watch your segments. Watching this, I was sort of waiting for you to mention how the invention of the blue LED in the 1990s made it possible to make effectively white light LEDs for home and flashlights, using much less energy than conventional incandescents or fluorescents. The Japanese scientists who made the discovery of how to create a blue LED were awarded the 2014 Nobel Prize.

Neil's explanation of outdoor/indoor film has just made me realize why old VHS camcorders had indoor/outdoor modes, and if you accidentally went outside with it set on "indoor" mode, everything would look tinted blue, and if you accidentally left it on "outdoor mode" inside, everything would look too yellowish.

I am a photographer and love how Neil explains colour theory.

its okay Chuck, I looked at the sun when I was a kid for over 10 seconds in mid day. It eventually turns all black with dancing colors on the rim.

Thank you for posting this. I asked this question some time ago to Star Talk, why are movies always depicting the Sun as yellow? When seen from space! From there it doesn't look yellow, it looks WHITE!

While the sun emits all the colours enough to saturate all of our cones so we can see white, current research suggests the sun is really green as thats the colour it emits the most out of all of the other ones. For us to see white it doesn’t have to be an even mixture of all the colours, if we just get enough of each light to fully saturate our cones we can’t tell if its an uneven mixture be you’d that because our eyes can’t detect those differences.

So here’s a question. The sun is a G2 star. They even call G class stars “yellow dwarfs“. They also appear as yellow on the Herzsprung-Russell diagram. So I accept your explanation that the sun is actually white in color, as it makes perfect sense. But if our sun were a red dwarf, or red giant, would it actually appear red, or would it be more of just a slightly pinkish white? Same thing if the sun were say, an O-class star, which we think of as “Blue” in astronomy. Would it look blue? White? Slightly bluish-white? If you look in the night sky at a Star known to be a red giant (or supergiant), like Arcturus or Antares, you can definitely see an orange/red tint to it. Rigel has a bluish color. Would these stars look the same color if you were standing on a planet orbiting them with an atmosphere like Earth’s?

"i don't see color" - makes a black joke every chance XD

I have never personally related to a piece of science this much. Thank you Neil for making the world just a bit more beautiful to me!

As a child. I remember literally staring at the sun at its core, and would lock eyes on it without blinking, then would start to see a blue circle moving in a circular motion. From what I can remember I did it Atleast 20 times in my childhood and never was affected by it. I actually have 20/20 vision

The total solar eclipse of 2017 was a really profound experience for me. Witnessing the sun, as a perfectly white diamond in the sky with the planets/stars coming out and twilight on every horizon…it was mind-blowing and it really changed by personal relationship to the cosmos forever. This is gonna sound grim…but honestly, I can see why ancient people starting sacrificing virgins and howling at the moon whenever a total solar eclipse came around. If you had no scientific basis for that experience, it would be shocking *beyond belief*

A world-renowned scientist using "thiccness" as a unit of measurement: this is now one of my favorite channels.

"We pulled the switch and it gave off light. Now, first it looked like magic." Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -- Arthur C. Clarke

I'm a photographer who was a physics major in college and this is the first time that I realized "warmer" light was actually cooler! ;-)

Adding to that confusion for photographers is the way that digital cameras handle manual compensation for light conditions. My wife and I were pro photogs for quite a few years, and I had a photog friend who was thoroughly mixed up on this concept. We talk about white balance in terms of degrees Kelvin. The lower the number, the more amber the light; the higher the number, the more blue the light contains. The way this plays out in your digital camera settings is that, when you walk into a room with dim incandescent lighting, you set the white balance in the camera to a lower number (maybe 3000K) because you’re telling the camera this is the approximate color of the light, so it will decrease the sensor’s sensitivity to reds/yellows and increase sensitivity to blues, thus resulting in a picture with white things looking white and other colors appearing as they should. The opposite is true outdoors where you set a higher number (6000K, or so) in order to increase reds/yellows and decrease blues. Our friend didn’t realize this setting was just telling the camera what to compensate for, and thought that the lower number meant blue and the higher number meant red/yellow. This came out one day when we were talking about light bulbs and he was swearing that fluorescent or LED bulbs with a higher color temp (5000K) would be very amber, and that something like 2500K would give a more bright daylight look. He kept saying, “When you want your picture more blue, you turn down to a lower number!”, which was accurate, but he was simply misunderstanding what was going on when you did that.

Here I am, getting closer and closer to my 40s and each time I watch a StarTalk video, I just feel like a 4th grader again.

5:23 Wanted : the blue sky Offense: possession of stolen sunlight 😏

Bro I actually felt that when he said I don’t see color, my eyes might see different shades but all I see is my family from different backgrounds, God bless everyone who reads this. Amen.

Im so happy I'm understanding NDT. He explains it in a visual way w his words ! I am 64 and have wondered about this and other things like tides, seasons, etc. It feels good to get it. So cool.

Wow. This was so much more informative than I thought it would be.

Me: Hey Sun, you are yellow. Sun: Don't EVER call me yellow!!

This was so interesting to watch, and made me understand why Arri Tungsten bulbs get 'warmer' (more orange) as you dim them down. Now I know its just because they produce less blue light when they shine dimmer.

If Neil was my physics lecturer I never bunk my class. I can listen his lecture with the same energy and the enthusiasm for the entire day when it started

You guys really need to start an educational kids tv show all about science! I truly believe you can teach not only children, but everyone in this world that science is fun and awesome! I love these explantation videos, even about the 'simplest' little things in our life. So many things that we just accept as normal because we see it everyday since our birth!

I am so early, but have no idea what to write that is special.

We need more people who can explain stuff the way Neil does it. If every teacher I had in school in every subject was teaching like this.... dang I’d be a doctor in something! 😎

Makes sense. Thanks for sharing. You guys are funny together. I enjoyed this moment 😆

That voice chuck put on was so funny 😂 definitely use that again at some point in the future 👍

Neil and chuck uploads a new video Me questions reality

Finally someone talked abt the actual color of Sun. Y can the books/schools make these changes right?

I've read some scientists saying that the Sun's real color is white but it's not perfect white as it has a bit of a green tint that is not easily perceived, only with the special equipment.

Chuck cracked my up waaaay more than usual. Great episode!

Frank Zappa: "Watch out where the Huskies go and don't you eat the yellow snow"

Chuck comics knowledge is an awesome balance... Love their dynamic!!

"You just need a little trigonometry. It's a simple calculation..." Pretty much sums up the difference between NDT and the rest of us. Now if he could find a way to allow the rest of us to realize that trigonometry and simple can in fact be in the same sentence that would be wonderful. In all seriousness, his ability to show the usefulness and practicality of mathematics as the basis of all science is a true gift.

The talk of colors and temperature names is never more apparent than when you look at bulbs and computer monitors and the different choices for where the white balance is, 3500K is "Warm" but 5600K is "Cold"

Shout out to Chuck! Saw his Tide commercial yesterday.

Exactly how art directors in movies make up the scenes in film. The director wants a specific looking scene and asks for the right kind of light needed for the set

"At first it looked like magic!" Had me dying! LOL

Who else as a kid got an F in art class for drawing the sun white? 🤚 Yep, I was a naughty kid

The house drawings are right with a yellow sun as it must be near the horizon to be in frame. Childhood restored, back to your crayons everyone 😊

I love this stuff! the line about don't tell an artist made me laugh... There is a huge difference between digital (RGB) coloring and print (CMYK) coloring. With RGB, adding all the colors gives you white. With CMYK, it gives you black. So much fun to wrap your head around that!

interestingly enough: I took my son and his friend to the skatepark and his friend asked what a spectrum was. I explained it in terms of light and he got it.... but, on the way home (heading west), the sunset was a full spectrum... even green, which was gorgeous "That. That is a spectrum" "Oooohhh! I get it!" I lobe the sun!

This is how I spend every day/night just watching and learning as much as humanly possible from my favorite astrophysicist

I love how Neil is laughing at almost everything, what a great guy haha

Very amazing topic discussed by interesting personalities 😀👍🏾

I have seen a few papers going around, proving our sun is actually green... And sure, many would love to see a Sun follow up video about this particular point!

Also, I love when yaw drop Superman in.

I actually knew of this because I used to look into the sky in the middle of the day

If you are driving East bound at daybreak it's difficult NOT to look at Sun. Sometimes in certain times it's near impossible to see the road due to Sun being below visor.

I like Dr. Neil talk and explain alone without any interuptions.

I figured that out when I was around 8. We had a science class with prisms and I said that the sun must be white for us to see white light & the teacher was a bit startled.

Great science show forever. 💯

The last part got me wondering: If the weak (or comparatively colder) incandescent bulb emanates yellow light while the sun produces white light (with the VIBGYOR components), is it possible that the light from an even hotter star would produce a different color of light because another component color got added?

The changing sun light in green land or someplace there’s a 3 day Timelapse of those days where the sun never sets so it’s just 3 days or something of the sun just always up and during that time the sunlight changes all kinds of colors it’s crazy…deep purples to green to yellow and orange and red I think it’s amazing how far the colors change on that Timelapse

1:48-1:52 perfect timing

Neal always finds a way to blow my mind. Love how he simplifies things for us. Love it.

So we can’t even get the color of the sun, sky or moon right. An everyday phenomenon everyone seems to agree with. We also have people who are color blind and tetrachromatic. Yet we have people out here judging people by the “color” of their skin and not their experiences or content of their character

There hasn't been one single episode where I haven't laughed at Chucks joke .Please keep up excellent sense of Humour and thanks for sharing such niche knowledge