Why do Uranus and Neptune appear blue, does their atmospheric composition contribute to this color?
In: Planetary Science
They’re both grey for the most part. They have a slight blue tint for the same reason the earth’s atmosphere does. That is, they tend to scatter blue light from the sun while some red and green light is absorbed by the lower atmosphere.
In visible light they are featureless. In order to reveal cloud structure you need an infrared camera. Cooler cloud layers show up darker in infrared.
Exaggerated blue and green colors were used in infrared photos to provide contrast for the different cloud layers.
At some point some committee at NASA hit on the idea of using a standard green color scheme for Uranus and a blue one for Neptune. The reason for this was to distinguish them from each other in images released to the press, raw infrared photographs are typically black & white. For the same reason venus is often given a false color yellow in infrared photographs. Even though it’s clouds are white in visible light. If you don’t believe me go check out Venus with binoculars at dawn or dusk. It’s definitely white, not yellow.
But yeah, they’re both light grew with a slight bluish tint at the edges.
Latest Answers