{"id":791840,"date":"2026-10-04T16:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791840\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T16:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T16:44:18","slug":"apod-2026-september-28-cosmic-latte-the-average-color-of-the-universe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/791840\/","title":{"rendered":"APOD: 2026 September 28 &#8211; Cosmic Latte: The Average Color of the Universe"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p-md margin-0 media-detail-hero__description\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tExplanation: What color is the universe? More precisely, if the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-article\/apod-2002-march-10-a-southern-sky-view\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">entire sky<\/a> were smeared out, what color would the final mix be? This whimsical <a href=\"http:\/\/sten.astronomycafe.net\/faqs\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">question<\/a> came up when trying to determine what stars are commonplace in nearby galaxies. The answer, depicted here, is a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aao.org\/eye-health\/tips-prevention\/how-humans-see-in-color\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">conditionally perceived shade<\/a> of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Beige\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">beige<\/a>. In computer parlance: #<a href=\"https:\/\/www.color-hex.com\/color\/fff8e7\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FFF8E7<\/a>. To determine this, astronomers computationally averaged the light emitted by one of the larger samples of <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-article\/apod-2026-april-23-large-scale-structure-of-the-universe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">galaxies<\/a> analyzed: the 200,000 <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-article\/apod-2001-september-4-2df-sees-waves-of-galaxies\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">galaxies<\/a> of the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/2dF_Galaxy_Redshift_Survey\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey<\/a>. The resulting <a href=\"https:\/\/ui.adsabs.harvard.edu\/abs\/2002ApJ...569..582B\/abstract\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cosmic spectrum<\/a> has some emission in all parts of the <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/ems\/01_intro\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">electromagnetic spectrum<\/a>, but a single perceived composite color. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.curiositybox.com\/blogs\/inqs-corner\/cosmic-latte-the-average-color-of-the-universe\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">This color<\/a> has become much less blue over <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/image-article\/apod-2025-november-23-the-observable-universe\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the past<\/a> 10 billion years, indicating that redder stars are becoming <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fprm50mltnj4d1.jpeg\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">more prevalent<\/a>. In a <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cosmic_latte#Naming_the_color\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">contest<\/a> to better name the color, notable entries included skyvory, univeige, and the winner: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cosmic_latte\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">cosmic latte<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>APOD&#8217;s email for image submissions has changed. Please see: <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\/submit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">APOD Submissions<\/a><br \/>Tomorrow: APOD&#8217;s main NASA site is <a href=\"https:\/\/asterisk.apod.com\/viewtopic.php?t=45023\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">moving<\/a>: From <a href=\"https:\/\/apod.nasa.gov\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">apod.nasa.gov<\/a> to <a href=\"https:\/\/science.nasa.gov\/apod\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">science.nasa.gov\/apod<\/a><br \/>Tomorrow&#8217;s picture: sky swirl\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explanation: What color is the universe? More precisely, if the entire sky were smeared out, what color would&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":791841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[238382,59,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-791840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-apod","tag-gb","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/791841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}