The color temperature of a light source is the temperature of an ideal black body radiator that radiates light of comparable hue to that of the light source. Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light that has important applications in lighting, photography,videography, publishing, manufacturing, astrophysics, horticulture, and other fields. In practice, color temperature is only meaningful for light sources that do in fact correspond somewhat closely to the radiation of some black body, i.e. those on a line from reddish/orange via yellow and more or less white to blueish white; it does not make sense to speak of the color temperature of e.g. a green or a purple light. Color temperature is conventionally stated in the unit of absolute temperature, the kelvin, having the unit symbol K.
Color temperatures over 5,000K are called cool colors (bluish white), while lower color temperatures (2,700–3,000 K) are called warm colors (yellowish white through red).[1] This relation, however, is a psychological one in contrast to the physical relation implied by Wien's displacement law, according to which the spectral peak is shifted towards shorter wavelengths (resulting in a more blueish white) for higher temperatures.
Categorizing different lighting
The color temperature of the electromagnetic radiation emitted from an ideal black body is defined as its surface temperature in kelvin, or alternatively in mired (micro-reciprocal kelvin).[4] This permits the definition of a standard by which light sources are compared.
To the extent that a hot surface emits thermal radiation but is not an ideal black body radiator, the color temperature of the light is not the actual temperature of the surface. An incandescent lamp's light is thermal radiation and the bulb approximates an ideal black body radiator, so its color temperature is essentially the temperature of the filament.
Many other light sources, such as fluorescent lamps, or LED's (light emitting diodes) emit light primarily by processes other than thermal radiation. This means the emitted radiation does not follow the form of a black body spectrum. These sources are assigned what is known as a correlated color temperature (CCT). CCT is the color temperature of a black body radiator which to human color perception most closely matches the light from the lamp. Because such an approximation is not required for incandescent light, the CCT for an incandescent light is simply its unadjusted temperature, derived from the comparison to a black body radiator.
The Sun[edit]
The Sun closely approximates a black body radiator. The effective temperature, defined by the total radiative power per square unit, is about 5,780 K.[5] The color temperature of sunlight above the atmosphere is about 5,900 K.[6]
As the Sun crosses the sky, it may appear to be red, orange, yellow or white depending on its position. The changing color of the sun over the course of the day is mainly a result of scattering of light, and is not due to changes in black body radiation. The blue color of the sky is caused by Rayleigh scattering of the sunlight from the atmosphere, which tends to scatter blue light more than red light.
Daylight has a spectrum similar to that of a black body with a correlated color temperature of 6,500 K (D65 viewing standard) or 5,500 K (daylight-balanced photographic film standard).
For colors based on black body theory, blue occurs at higher temperatures, while red occurs at lower, cooler, temperatures. This is the opposite of the cultural associations attributed to colors, in which "red" is "hot", and "blue" is "cold".
*** Contents are from wikipedia.org
