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color temperature

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Also known as colour temperature

property of light sources related to black-body radiation

Wikidata facts

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Commons category
Color temperature
recommended unit of measurement
kelvin
Sources (3)

via Wikidata · CC0

~23 min read

Encyclopedic overview

The CIE 1931 x,y chromaticity space, also showing the chromaticities of black-body light sources of various temperatures (Planckian locus), and lines of constant correlated color temperature

Color temperature is a parameter describing the color of a visible light source by comparing it to the color of light emitted by an idealized opaque, non-reflective body. The temperature of the ideal emitter that matches the color most closely is defined as the color temperature of the original visible light source. The color temperature scale describes only the color of light emitted by a light source, which may actually be at a different (and often much lower) temperature.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “color temperature” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.