Star colours

Did you get to take a look at the stars? Here's what you should have seen, Betelgeuse (top left of Orion) is a reddish star, Rigel (bottom right of Orion) is a bluish star, Aldeberan (found by the following the imaginary line through the "belt" upwards to the right) has a distinct orange tint to it and Sirius (found by the following the imaginary line through the "belt" downwards to the left) is white - yes there are white stars! There are also yellow stars, green stars and stars of almost all the colours of the rainbow!

So why are stars different colours? In short it's linked to their temperature, blue and white stars being extremely hot and red and orange being somewhat cooler, although still very hot!

If you would like to know more about the colours, temperatures and sizes of stars, take a look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star