Both ice giants are similar pale blue, new research finds, correcting earlier beliefs about the planets’ relative hues
It’s a colour beloved by interior designers, but it seems duck-egg blue is also splashed across our solar system, with research suggesting it is the true colour of both Uranus and Neptune.
The new work puts paid to the popular belief that Neptune has a deep blue hue, suggesting instead both planets are a similar colour – with Neptune only slightly more blue than Uranus.
“Uranus is still bland and rather boring looking, but Neptune looks fairly washed-out as well when you do the full true colour reconstruction,” said Prof Patrick Irwin, first author of the study at the University of Oxford.
The colour of the ice giants has long been known to be a result of high levels of methane in their atmospheres, a gas that absorbs green and red light. Research by Irwin and colleagues has previously suggested Neptune was the slightly bluer of the two planets because one of the layers of aerosol in its atmosphere was more transparent.
Wild, I never would have thought any of that. Makes Neptune kinda less special to me as a red-green colorblind person, but I guess it makes Uranus have a twin rather than a cousin. Really neat to see how our understanding of our local neighborhood still can change.