What color are the stars?
- some pixel rgb values

The idea: It would be nice to have at least a vague idea of what color stars are.
Here is some help on converting from stellar type/class (and color indexes) to pixel rgb values.

More formally - I have derived chromaticity and rgb pixel color, from spectra for various stellar types/classes, providing physically-motivated colors for astronomy presentations. Though the colors are still a bit rough.

The colors here are for the big balls of hot gas in space, rather than the pin-pricks of light in the local sky. I.e., atmospheric, interstellar medium, and relative motion effects are discarded...

The OBAFGKM table...

 Sp5(V)  r   g   b     rgb
  O     155 176 255  #9bb0ff  
  B     170 191 255  #aabfff  
  A     202 215 255  #cad7ff  
  F     248 247 255  #f8f7ff  
  G     255 244 234  #fff4ea  
  K     255 210 161  #ffd2a1  
  M     255 204 111  #ffcc6f  

Some familiar stars...

Some nearby stars...

Stellar types

See Star color - details for greater detail.
These are not "magic" pixel values. Different approaches yield different values, but ones with quite similar appearance.

Other

Galaxy (spiral)	0.3523 0.3556     255 225 199 #ffe1c7 Kurucz
Galaxy (elliptical)	0.3617 0.3649     255 222 186 #ffdeba Kurucz
Quasar	0.2188 0.2764     073 214 255 #49d6ff Kurucz

Universe                 0.3450 0.3450     255 225 209 #ffe1d1 Glazebrook & Baldry

Notes

So, what should be born in mind looking at these colors?
These colors attempt to show "true" color. That is: without intervening atmosphere or interstellar medium; with the light dim enough to avoid saturating your cones (which would make the light appear white); and yet with the light bright enough that you are seeing color rather than rod grayscale.

So... looking at the star from space while wearing gray sunglasses (unpolarized:). Hmm... or better, through a gray window shade in a D65 white wall.

In applying these colors, remember that color perception is quite messy, so what you see is often not what you've got.

This page is concerned only with chromaticity (hue and saturation), but not brightness. The luminous power per unit area of star classes varies greatly. If we were doing brightness, and the G class star color were as above, then the M class star color would simply be black. See Blackbody colors - intensity.

The choice of white point, used in converting from abstract chromaticity to device-dependent rgb, has a large effect. Eg, see Sun. These colors use D65. I plan to add a set for D50.

Are you sure these colors are right? They seem odd.
No, I am not sure. And yes, they do. I was expecting rather different colors. As are many other folk, apparently, from my reading. Nevertheless...

Links

Thanks
Sigh. I just wanted some not-completely-bogus pixel values to color in the disks of a comparison of star sizes (How Big Are Things?). Now, n hours later... My thanks to John Walker's Colour Rendering of Spectra (specrend) and Dan Bruton's Color Science, who's pages got me started. To the CVRL Color & Vision database. To Andrew Hamilton for What colour is the Sun?, which suggested I was not completely confused. And to efg for his Color Reference Library. Without them, this page would not have happened. My thanks also to the stellar spectra sites.

UPDATE (2016-Mar-29): The one thing I'd add to the site, is my suggestion that most people use D58 instead of D65. D65 is an image standard, and common monitor calibration. Which just means that if you fill your 6500K-calibrated screen with some D65 color, then it lights up your room, as if your room was lit by that star. Which is only rarely how people use the colors. Most of the time, the user is looking at them on a screen, and comparing them with screen #fff white. And for that, D65 is misleading. Suggesting for instance, that the Sun is pink, rather than white. D58 matches star white to screen white, and ignores that the screen might be a bluish 6500K, or redish 5000K, or something random in between. A few years ago, I ran a set of D58 star colors for someone's astronomy program: starcolorsD58. For whatever it's worth.

Notes:

Doables:
  Add D50 colors.
  Talk about D65 and D50 whitepoints.
  Get more domain folks to validate.
  Do a nicer stellar type/class color intro table.  
  Include "astronomers' pale pastel palette" and "colorful exaggeration" quotes.
  Add Hubble starcolor pretty picture.
  Individual spectra for near stars.
  Name site "stellar chromaticity"?

History:
  2016-Mar-29  Added link to D58 colors.  Thanks to a reader for prompting it.
  2002-Dec-30  Added link to spacegear.  Thanks to a reader.
  2002-Dec-14  Switched to a better Bright Star dataset.  Capella was wrong.  Thanks to a reader.
  2002-Nov-11  Fixed links broken by CVRL move.
  2002-Mar-14  Added universe color.  They got burned by specrend too.  Sigh.
  2001-Jun-23  Added near stars, white dwarfs.
  2001-Jun-22  Switched to sRGB from Rec.709 (similar matrix, different gamma).
  2001-Jun-15  New dataset combination approach.  Page of data plots.
  2001-Jun-08  Added GunnStryker spectra.
  2001-Jun-07  Added Kurucz's galaxies, quasar; Pickles spectra.
  2001-Jun-04  on-line