Yes. I still see the colors of stars, but it's like a pale color. They are mostly white, but some tend toward red, others yellow, others blue. There's definitely a difference. When I see Mars, it is definitely more red, especially so when it is closer.

But I distinctly remember my young eyes, probably when I was 4, that the the stars had a lot more color than they do now. I remember talking about it with my mother while she was driving one night.

I score fairly high on color acuity tests, and gravitated toward a job in color printing in my 20s, and learned color management. I matched so many colors in CMYK and CMYKOG by hand, because the color models used to calculate color differences and tolerances do a poor job of modeling the response of the human eye to color. Since then the models have improved, but they still need work. Given what this article describes, this makes complete sense. You are mapping two very different mathematical spaces from one to the other. One based around specific pigments with specific values, and the other based around differential curves between color receptors with overlapping ranges.

Are you by any chance one of the (described in the article) tetrachromates?

Not possible. Tetrachromates have to have two X chromosomes, which means that almost all tetrachromates are women. In rare cases, a man can have two X chromosomes, but I'm definitely one of them.

Of course I meant to say "not one of them."

I am not color blind and I've never noticed star colors. They just look white or yellow to me. It must be very subtle.

Try Mars? Not a star, duh, but it's glaringly red, even when observed in the city.

Mars is particularly bright right now too, it's quite striking.

/me takes binoculars and ventures outside... gasp!

It's just after full Moon and Mars is just next to the Moon, hence also on max luminosity.

It helps to be way out from the city, and some stars stand out better than others as having a color other than yellow/white.

Antares, for example, is one I can consistently see as red.

Somewhat unrelated story, but I used to be in astronomy and two friends of mine were once on an observing run together. Observing can sometimes be a bit dull and as you're getting night shifted it's hard to do anything productive while you're waiting for the exposures to finish. So you're looking for ways to pass the time.

Anyway, somehow my two friends started looking at color blindness tests. One of them had grown up in Latin America and hadn't seen a color blindness test before, so the other was explaining how there's a number in the center that you can't see if you're color blind. And he said... "what number?" That was how he learned at age 26 that he was color blind.

Probably not that severe.

Is it obvious to everyone else? Do colored dots stand out in the sky? Or is it a subtle thing?

To me (not colour blind), they are not really coloured. Some are slightly more yellow or blue, but that's about it.

They do, however, twinkle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twinkling

And while twinkling, I catch glimpses of red, yellow, blue or others. Of course, this is very subjective and that wikipedia page doesn't mention colour changing at all.

It probaly has to do with the low visibility of stars in general. Especially mayor european cities have so much light pollution that people, myself included, just see a few white dots at the night sky varying in brightness and ever so slightly in color if you pay attention.

It is subtle and to the naked eye, at a quick glance, the stars in the night sky are all little white dots.

Not a mass of little coloured dots.

A color-blind poster here - this month has been the first time that I've noticed colors in stars (or planet, specifically).

Mars is very close and red these days, which I hadn't noticed before. I got quite giddy when I first saw a "colored dot" in the sky a few days ago and now most of my evening runs are motivated by getting a glimpse of the bright red planet. :)

A few weeks more until it starts rising early and isn't distinguishable anymore.

They are almost impossible to tell apart in a lit sky.

When the sky is dark, red stars are very distinctive, I don't think even color blind people would have a problem. (I am color blind, but I confuse blue and green, not red and green.)

Both yellow and blue stars emit blueish and yellowish light, and are much harder to tell apart.

As an added bonus, red stars are the first to disappear against a lit sky :(

Yup.

> "The color of a star, as determined by the most intense frequency of the visible light, depends on the temperature of the star's outer layers, including its photosphere."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star#Radiation

The poster's question should be interpreted as: can the color of the stars be distinguished with the naked eye?

Again, yes. Particularly in clusters, I can detect differences in the colors of stars.

Wow - sounds like you have more sensitive than average color perception.

Do you think you might be a tetrachromat?

Nope. It probably helps to live away from cities and such, in that there's a lot of stars visible at night. And it's not like looking at a rainbow: they're tints, not intense color differences.

'endogui linked to an article that talks about this: I don't think it's all that unusual.

https://earthsky.org/?p=2875

Stars mostly look white to me (or very light yellow or blue) and I‘m fairly confident I have standard color vision — but I’m nearsighted and have mild strabismus, so they look pretty bad unless I’m using a telescope. :(

Also r/g colorblind, and that line surprised me. Apparently it is visible to the naked eye on the brighter stars:

https://earthsky.org/?p=2875