Is outer space mostly black in color?

It's mostly black to our human eye, but it's far less black than it appears. Light follows the "inverse-square law" and spreads out, becoming less bright, the farther it travels, but it is out there. If your eyes sensitive enough to see twice as far, space would seem four times brighter. read more

Outer space transmits light from whatever is beyond it: if the detector is sensitive enough this can be a very colourful collection of distant galaxies, but outer space is acting just like a pane of glass or, more appropriately, an open window. In particular outer space is not black. read more

The color black usually signals the absence of light. But inside the solar system, space is filled with light. “Light usually travels straight ahead in a line unless it reflects off of something or is bent by a lens,” explains Geza Gyuk, Director of Astronomy at the Adler Planetarium and a research scientist at the University of Chicago. read more

Normal visible color temperatures range from about 1500 K and up. The entire universe is pervaded by the cosmic background radiation, the remnant light of the big bang. Everywhere we look we see this light. In terms of color temperature, the cosmic background radiation is about 3K, so that is the background color of the universe. read more

Black is a color in a perceptual sense, but in the physical sense it’s just the lack of light — and you do get a lot of that in outer space. On the other hand, almost all light that does reach you left thousands, millions, or billions of years ago. read more