Earth Orbits a K-Type Star. What Would the Visual Scenery Look Like?
To clarify on the title, K-type main-sequence stars--shortened as "orange dwarves"--are subjects of excitement for astronomers and astrobiologists.
Why?
- They emit enough radiation to provide a high-enough temperature to make water liquid but not high enough for solar radiation. (This would mean no auroras, but it also means no genes would be damaged by UV exposure.)
- They have a longer lifespan than G-type stars. (15-30 billion years compared to our sun's total of ten billion.) This means that life would be given more time to evolve.
- They are three to four times more common than G-type stars, making the search for Earth-like exoplanets hypothetically easier.
- Despite having 45-80% of a G-type star's mass, they can still be just as bright.
Now let's throw Earth into this scenario. It still orbits this orange sun at a distance of 93 million miles. To narrow the scenario even further, this question focuses on the emphasis that a star has on color.
These photos are of the hours of the day, from dawn to dusk under a blue atmosphere and a yellow star. Now imagine Earth still having its blue atmosphere but the star now being orange instead of yellow. To the human eye, would this change the color of any part of the day in any way?
This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/109750. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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