What is the colour of space?
When you look at the sky, what colour does it appear to be? Bluish white in the morning, black in the night, right? The daytime sky looks blue because light from the nearby sun hits molecules in the Earth's atmosphere scattering it off in all directions and resulting in a blue colour. At night, when the same part of Earth is facing away from the sun, space seems to be black because since there is no nearby bright source of light, like the sun, to be scattered. But what if you were on the moon which has no atmosphere? The sky there would seem black both at night and during the day. So, what is the actual colour of space, regardless of your place? The question that appears simple, has actually baffled scientists for many centuries.
The cosmic spectrum
A very big survey was conducted by Australian scientists in 2002, named 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey to find out the exact colour of the space. The survey captured the visible spectra of more than 200,000 galaxies from across the observable universe. A visible light spectrum known as the cosmic spectrum was created by combining the spectra of all these galaxies, which accurately represented the entire universe. The cosmic spectrum represents the light emitted throughout the universe and not just as it appears to us on Earth. And therefore, this cosmic spectrum allowed scientists to determine the average colour of the universe.
Space is ‘beige’
So, what were the findings? The researchers used a colour-matching computer programme to convert the cosmic spectrum into a single colour visible to humans. They concluded that the average colour of the universe is beige, not too far off from white. Well, that sounds boring!
But what does it mean? It means that if we add up all the light coming from galaxies (and the stars within them), and all the clouds of gas and dust in the universe, we would get a colour that is not only whitish, but a bit ‘beige’.
Cosmic latte
Well, the colour had to be christened and there were many suggestions from different scientists such as ‘cappuccino cosmico’, ‘big bang beige’ and ‘primordial clam chowder’. But eventually, the new colour was named "cosmic latte," based on the Italian word for milk.
Bonus fact: Let us tell you something really surprising. What colour do you think the sun is? Yellow or orange? No, The real colour of the sun is actually white. But then why does it look yellow? The sun appears yellow due to our atmosphere and a strange play of physics. Our eyes see this colour from Earth. But once you leave the Earth's atmosphere, the sun appears white. That’s intriguing, isn’t it?