JH Color Theory: Cosmic Latte
Most exciting discovery: The “Color of The Universe,” circa 2002, is basically our Marzipan polish.
In 2001 a team of astronomers at Johns Hopkins University set out to determine and name the color of the universe, i.e. the resulting mix of colors if the entire sky was smeared out.
In order to do this, Karl Glazebrook & Ivan Baldry analyzed the average of light emitted from a sample of light measurements taken from 200,000+ galaxies.
A tiny version of the largest image ever taken of the Andromeda galaxy.
“[They] constructed a "cosmic spectrum," which represents all the energy in the local universe emitted at different optical wavelengths of light. They realized that if they simply summed up those measurements, they might be able to deduce something about the average wavelength, or color, of the light coming from their huge sample of objects.”
"The resulting cosmic spectrum has some emission in all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, but a single perceived composite color."
A swatch of Duresco watercolor paints, ca. 1901
The average? A beige-ish white. Aka. "Cosmic Latte." Aka. Marzipan.
Other names in the running:
Astronomer Almond
Skyvory
Cosmic Khaki
color reference: soft serve
From "Color In The Universe," c/o CalTech Library Archives.