What color is ultraviolet and infrared?

Question

If it is beyond red and violet, then what the heck would it be? Since there aren't only two other colors, ultraviolet and infrared, how many ultraviolets/infrareds are there? If any things can see these colors, what can ? How would you describe the color? If you try to think of a color that you've never seen before, without any of the colors from the color spectrum, its impossible. What would these colors be!?!??!

Answer 1

Ultraviolet and infrared are part of the electromagnetic spectrum as are the visible colors, but they aren't visible to the eye and they aren't colors. The visible colors are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, although in recent years it was decided that indigo is not a separate color.



Ultraviolet radiation is the shorter wavelength higher energy radiation just past violet in the EM spectrum. Infrared is the lower energy longer wavelength just before the visible red. The entire visible light spectrum lies between the two. Both of these can be detected by instrumentation, but not seen with your eyes.

Answer 2

In False Color images, infrared frequencies are usually assigned to the red band of the image. An image can either have three bands of red, green, and blue, based on additive color theory, or cyan, magenta, and yellow bands, based on negative color theory. Ultraviolet frequencies can be assigned to any band you want to assign it to, but most scientists would assign ultraviolet frequencies to the blue band of a false color image. Because infrared has longer wavelengths and lower frequencies and ultraviolet light has shorter wavelengths than the human eye can perceive, neither has colors that we can see. I think it would be absolutely wonderful if we could actually see more of the electromagnetic spectrum than the visible light range. Think about colors making chords like sound does in music. It would be glorious and awe inspiring.



I know this answer is probably completely above your head. If you have questions, please e-mail me.

Answer 3

If you look at the electromagnetic spectrum (like in this image here http://www.dnr.sc.gov/ael/personals/pjpb/lecture/spectrum.gif), ultraviolet and infrared waves are beyond the visible light spectrum for humans, so they aren't visible to the naked human eye and don't have colors (though some animals can see infrared and UV light). The term infrared just means its wavelength is longer than that of red visible light, and ultraviolet means its wavelength is shorter than that of violet visible light.



Hopefully this answers your question?

Answer 4

You CANNOT interpret a color upon seeing UV or IR. The human brain doesn't have a color mapped to them, because the eye isn't sensitive to them.



The sun's peak emissions are in the visible light spectrum. Our eyes adapted to see the peak emission of the sun, because those are the colors most abundant during our evolution, and thus those are the only colors needed to survive.



If you only see pure UV or pure IR...it will look black and you'd see nothing.



Only in false-color displays can they actually have a color. And all that is, is the device re-mapping the image and re-emitting a different image (containing the same information) in the visible spectrum.



There are general conventions to mapping the non-visible to visible. I don't know the conventions off the top of my head...but of course there are some false-color displays that "make up" their own convention.







"how many ultraviolets/infrareds are there?"



You seem to be fixated on a countable number of colors in the visible spectrum. This isn't true at all.



You only think there are seven colors (or six or eight, depending on how much you know about color), because human vision is able to distinguish them (with our three cone cell receptors, each selectively sensitive to different ranges of the spectrum).





The actual spectrum is completely continuous, with no definite boundary existing between any pair of colors.





In other words...red and green are obviously different.



In between red and green, there is a secondary color called yellow, which stimulates both the red-type cone and the green-type cone.



Now...you can distinguish yellow from green, and yellow from red.



BUT, now let's try to look at the distinction of red and yellow.



Well...the transitional color there is of course orange.



What's between orange and yellow? Yellow orange.

What's between yellow-orange and yellow? Yellowish yellow-orange.

What's between yellowish yellow-orange and yellow? Yellowish yellowish yellow-orange.



I can go on and on.





Either way, my point still stands. The spectrum is continuous. There are an uncountable number of possible colors just within the visible spectrum.





IR and UV are just as continuous...if not, moreso.



You don't have sensors that are uniquely sensitive to different zones of UV or IR...it all seems to be the same stuff in the ways that you might "feel" it to be.

Answer 5

Forgive me if I'm wrong but I don't think they lye in the color spectrum. They are different kind of light rays. I think there are some snakes and possibly spiders who use these. You can't tell what it would look like because we do not have their eyes but it would not be like how we see. They are not colors just wavelengths of heat energy.

Answer 6

There are infrared and unltraviolet light waves, but they are out of the visible spectrum.