On a clear night I saw Sirius changing colors from blue to white. Why does this happen?

This is just refraction of the various light rays from Sirius bu the turbulent atmosphere. Think of the image of Sirius as a series of overlapping images at each color of the visual spectrum from blue to red. When the air is stable ( which it never is!) the images overlap and you see white light. When the blue image gets slightly more refracted than the others, a bit of the blue image predominates.


Copyright 1997 Dr. Sten Odenwald
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