The colors of stars are recorded as scalar magnitude differences, called 
color indexes.  Theoretically, the color of a star can be reconstructed 
from a color index by correlating the value to a temperature, then 
calculating the black body color.

The second step is easy, as it's already been done in a popular POV-Ray 
suite.  :-)  But the first step requires astronomical research.  A few 
years ago, I found a curve fit by Cameron Reed of Alma College. 
Yesterday, while trying to distract myself from the realization that 
almost half my fellow citizens hate my guts, I chanced upon another 
formula, by F. J. Ballesteros of Universitat de València.

I created a color map derived from each of the formulas.  (The curves 
show the sRGB compositions of the derived colors.)  The resulting images 
are quite different.  It looks like I'll have to look up a few actual 
stars and see which one of these curves matches the stellar data more 
closely.

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