SKY & PLANT COLOR ft. Worldbuilding Notes
Why Worldbuilding Stack Exchange recommends it
Worldbuilding Stack Exchange answerers point people to it when they need a science-based method for working out sky colour and foliage colour under different stars and atmospheres.
Recommended by 4 people across 8 different months, 2019 to 2023.
What it is
A 2019 episode from Artifexian, made with the Worldbuilding Notes channel, on how to choose a fictional planet's sky colour and plant colour. It covers how atmosphere, cloud cover and star type affect the sky, and how starlight spectrum shapes plant pigments. The description links calculators and a sourced script.
What people said
Recommends TheDyingOfLight · 2019-04 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Plausibility of purple oceans”
I see three approaches to this problem. Star Type Change the spectral class of the systems star. Make it put out most of its light in the purple instead of the green like our sun. This formula will give you your stars peak output in nm wavelength for a given temperature $T$ in Kelvin. Purple is between 380 and 420 nm. $peak \space radiation = (2.898 \times 10^{-3}/T) \times 10^9$ The issue here is that peak radiation in the purple would mean significantly more UV and especially ionising UV radiation than our green peaking sun. This would strongly effect evolution. It would also shorten the time available for evolution, as the star would be big and short lived, maybe spectral class F or A. Wa
Recommends TheDyingOfLight · 2019-05 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Is it possible to create a realistic habitable planet/moon with actually alien landscape?”
You are limiting yourself a lot by demanding a human inhabitable planet. Truely alien options would be habitable ice-shell icean worlds like Europa (it life truely originated in deep sea hydrothermal vents like the DNA if the last common universal ancestor suggests [LINK] , Europa could be considered a prime example of the majority of habitable planets). I just metioned thus to show you that Earthlike might not be the standartmodel. Another somewhat earthlike but truly alien planet would be a liqid hydrocarbon world like Saturns moon Titan [LINK] . Water takes the role of rock and ammonia-water mixtures the one of lava. There are some indicators that life in titans hydrocarbon lakes is not i
Recommends TheDyingOfLight · 2019-08 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What gases could be present in a viable atmosphere for humans?”
Firstly it sounds like you want to do bottom-up worldbuilding, meaning you want to get the basic science straight first. I would recommend worldbuilding YouTuber Artifexian [LINK] , as he has a series where he starts with constructing the solar system and has currently reached climate mapping. He breaks down the science to a very digestible minimum. For your question, I recommend watching his videos on atmospheres [LINK] , alien atmospheres [LINK] and sky and plant-color [this video] . Pressure Pressure may vary significantly on "earthlike" planets. Mars has only about 0.006 atm, Earth has 1 atm, Titan has 1.5 atm and Venus 96 atm. Mars and Venus both experienced cataclysmic events in their pasts
Recommends TheDyingOfLight · 2019-09 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Explaining Planet Colors/Compositions”
What you want to know here is an entire field of science. You could of cause use the Sudarsky's gas giant classification [LINK] for gas-giants and maybe of ice-giants. This video [this video] about sky and plant colors should help as well. Outside of that, just look at the solar system's planets, pick the one most similar to your fictional world in terms of mass, composition, and illumination. Modify the looks and don't go too crazy.
Recommends TheDyingOfLight · 2019-09 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What color would plants orbiting a white dwarf have?”
Then there is the factor of tidal locking to consider. Even planets orbiting Red Dwarf stars will always be tidally locked, so your planet will be, too. Yet it doesn't have to be the 1:1 one spin-orbit resonance. In fact the high eccentricity makes a higher resonance like Mercury's 3:2 or the even higher 2:1 and 5:2 resonances quite likely. While I don't have the answer to your question, this video [this video] will help you. Use the methods suggested in there in combination with a black body temperature calculator. Or just look up what colours terrestial chlorophylls use.
Recommends rek · 2021-02 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Kinds of stars and local plant life”
Artifexian and Worldbuilding Notes released a video overview of plant, sky, and sun combinations: [this video] And a Google Doc calculator to output plant colours according to those variables: [LINK] Screencaps of the calculator: [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends rek · 2021-02 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “Do different star types produce plants with different properties?”
Artifexian and Worldbuilding Notes have released a video overview of plant, sky, and sun combinations: [this video] And a Google Doc calculator to output plant colours according to those variables: [LINK] Screencaps of the calculator: [LINK] [LINK]
Recommends rek · 2021-03 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What color would plants be on a hot spring planet?”
@John The spectrum of light reaching the surface in the greatest quantities plays a key role, and it's why green predominates on Earth. It doesn't mean there won't be other strategies, but one is going to capture the most energy if that's where the energy is. More here: [this video] (sources in script).
Recommends UserUser · 2021-10 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What would make a planet have a different sky colour?”
I suggest you watch the Youtube video: SKY & PLANT COLOR ft. Worldbuilding Notes [this video] . The video explains how cloud cover and star size or brightness could affect sky color.
Recommends faddllz · 2022-05 · Worldbuilding Stack Exchange · on “What colour is the foliage if the sky is yellowish?”
the answer by @indigofenix is wonderful and i think fulfilled the needed answer. I'm only want to add this video by artifexian. [this video] this video talk about the correlation between the color of the sky and the color of the leaves of plants. i think this video could help you a lot in this topic.