With the naked eye, stars can be seen to have subtly-different colors. Other commenters have pointed out that Mars is rather distinctly orange/red, and easily visible in the skies of North America now.
One example between stars right now is the two brightest stars in the constellation Orion. Where I am, in Indiana, USA, Orion rises around midnight EDT (~0400 UTC) tonight. It will rise earlier is you are east of me, and will rise earlier as we get into northern-hemisphere winter.
Betelgeuse (pronounced like the movie "Beetlejuice", but with "bay" instead of "bee") is Orion's right shoulder. Since he is facing towards us, it is the star in the top-left of the constellation. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, so it is both distinctly bright and distinctly red when compared to the other stars in Orion.
The star I like to compare Betelgeuse to is Rigel, Orion's left knee (bottom-right from our point of view).Rigel is a blue supergiant, similarly bright to Betelgeuse.
Here's an excellent color-enhanced mosaic image of the constellation by Rogelio Bernal Andreo, which clearly shows the red-orange-ness of Betelgeuse compared to the other stars in the constellation:
To the naked eye, I (and other typically-sighted people) can distinguish these colors easily when looking for them. Their color ranges from red/orange to white to sort of sky-blue. This is because starlight is black-body radiation, which creates a very specific scale of colors. Here is an image showing the typical colors of stars, and their corresponding surface temperatures:
Rest assured that to me, at a glance, stars are just bright white dots. Even knowing that the colors are there, I still have to stop for a second and look at them in order to see it.
One example between stars right now is the two brightest stars in the constellation Orion. Where I am, in Indiana, USA, Orion rises around midnight EDT (~0400 UTC) tonight. It will rise earlier is you are east of me, and will rise earlier as we get into northern-hemisphere winter.
Betelgeuse (pronounced like the movie "Beetlejuice", but with "bay" instead of "bee") is Orion's right shoulder. Since he is facing towards us, it is the star in the top-left of the constellation. Betelgeuse is a red supergiant, so it is both distinctly bright and distinctly red when compared to the other stars in Orion.
The star I like to compare Betelgeuse to is Rigel, Orion's left knee (bottom-right from our point of view).Rigel is a blue supergiant, similarly bright to Betelgeuse.
Here's an excellent color-enhanced mosaic image of the constellation by Rogelio Bernal Andreo, which clearly shows the red-orange-ness of Betelgeuse compared to the other stars in the constellation:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Orion_He...
More information about the image can be found here:
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap101023.html
To the naked eye, I (and other typically-sighted people) can distinguish these colors easily when looking for them. Their color ranges from red/orange to white to sort of sky-blue. This is because starlight is black-body radiation, which creates a very specific scale of colors. Here is an image showing the typical colors of stars, and their corresponding surface temperatures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-body_radiation#/media/Fi...
Rest assured that to me, at a glance, stars are just bright white dots. Even knowing that the colors are there, I still have to stop for a second and look at them in order to see it.