Official Site of Joshua

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent

Published: 5:03PM GMT 02 Nov 2009

But as Nasa has pointed out the real colour of outer space would not look out of place on an office wall: it is beige.

After studying the colour of light emitted by 200,000 galaxies scientists have combined them to produce the colour, they have dubbed 'cosmic latte'.

Other names suggested for it were 'univeige' and 'skyvory'.

But apparently this colour has changed over the last six billion years as the predominant colour has shifted from blue to more of a red.

The British astrophysicists Dr Karl Glazebrook and Dr Ivan Baldry, were both at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, when they made the discovery.

They came up with the colour by creating a cosmic spectrum before blending it according to what the human eye would see.

Dr Baldry, who described the research as "a bit of fun", said: "We believe that the survey is large enough, reaching out several billion light years, to make this a truly representative sample.

"Really the answer is very close to white.

"Our real motive for calculating the cosmic spectrum was really a lot more than producing this one

colour.

"The colour is interesting but in fact the cosmic spectrum is rich in detail and tells us a lot more about the history of star formation in the universe."

The findings suggested the Universe started off as a shade of blue but a generation of "red" stars evolved so that the universe will become redder and redder.

The change in colour over six billion years from pale turquoise to beige is similar to the colour of the sky at sunset.

Now it varies between a pale pink, cream and a soft turquoise colour depending on the adaptation of the eye to different amounts of light.

For those redecorating to recreate the universe at home, cosmic latte is somewhere in the middle.

The real colour of the universe is displayed on the Nasa picture of the day at http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap091101.html  .

I'd like to order a grande iced americano with no shots please

I'd like a space coffee latte!

Science has come so far.

Science has come a long way, latte cosmos is great!

Your universe is carmelized onion mostly.

I would like a latte with a Milky Way!