GLOW-UP

Astronomers Find First Ever Green Star

New research suggests that, if we looked at them up close, some stars would appear in shades of green, pink, cyan, yellow, and purple.

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Astronomers found the universe’s first star that glows “ghostly green,” according to a new study. Most stars come in shades determined by their temperature—usually blue, white, and orange. White dwarves—the dense cores left behind when larger, Sun-like stars die—were widely assumed to follow the same rule. But new research from the University of Warwick suggests some may actually shine in hues of green, pink, cyan, yellow, and purple. “It turns out these incredibly dense stars can produce colors nobody expected, and some of them genuinely surprised me,” study co-author Mark Hollands said in a statement. The stars’ ultra-dense atmospheres and trace elements can interact to create a wider range of colors visible to humans. Because white dwarfs are too far from Earth to see with the naked eye, scientists calculated their color from their spectra, or “fingerprints” of light split by wavelength. Researchers ran the spectra through a human-vision model to predict how they would look up close.