I spend an quite a lot of my weekends thoroughly enjoying myself running around after one or more of god-children*  and handing them back before responsibility sets in. I love them all to bits.

Some years ago I wanted to buy a special present for one of them without defaulting to baby-boy-blue or baby-girl-pink.  (I’m broadly against reinforcing gender colours, but I do want them to have a nice blanket).

After a bit of a wander (and a wonder), I found myself thinking about starlight. The first thought is that starlight is white, but, given that the are red giants, the colour of starlight should logically come in many different colours.

That’s when I found this amazing site, in which a guy called Mitchell Charity posted the colour values of a range of stars nearby (insofar as ‘further than any human can hope to travel in our lifetime’ counts as ‘nearby’).

It turns out that the colours of stars are remarkably different. And so that’s why I never buy anyone anything that’s Baby Blue. Instead the little one in question got a blanket the exact colour of starlight from Sirius (‘#b5c7ff’ if you are interested) .

For those that can’t, read hex- this is the colour of Sirius:

*I have a large number of God-children. For two of them I had to swear I was nontheist (which my spell checker insists is wrong, despite accepting monotheist). For another two I was promoted to God-uncle several years after the original roles were given out (and, later, right up to Godfather). For yet another two I originally accepted the role as the male ‘geek-parent’, which seamed like a lot of fun, but I’ve noticed I’m referred to as ‘guideparent’, which feels like I should have more gravitas.