Neptune and Uranus show their true colors for the first time

If you ask experts on this topic what colors are Neptune And Uranus, they would likely answer “dark blue” and “green” respectively. However, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed that the two ice giants are more similar in color than previously thought. In the end, they are actually both Blue-green tone.

It has been known for some time that most modern images of the two planets do not accurately reflect their true colors. It didn't make sense for them to be so different, because both worlds were so similar. They are approximately the same size and are surrounded by a deep atmosphere made up of similar elements.

The first detailed views were made possible thanks to NASA's Voyager 2 probe, It flew by Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. Voyager 2 remains the only spacecraft to have approached both planets. The original confusion arose due to the publication of photos taken in different colors.

Images of Uranus have been processed close to their actual color. But those on Neptune have been interpolated to better show some aspects of its atmosphere. This changed its color, showing it as an artificial dark blue. “They did something that I think everyone on Instagram has done at some point in their life: they changed the colors,” Katherine Heymans, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, explained to Instagram. BBC.

New “revealing” images of Uranus and Neptune

Researchers from New study They used data from the Hubble Space Telescope's Imaging Spectrograph (STIS). They also took advantage of the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) of the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (ELT). In both instruments, Each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colors. This means that observations can be processed unambiguously to determine the true apparent color of Uranus and Neptune.

The team used all this data to rebalance the images taken by Voyager 2 and others taken by Hubble. Thus, they saw that Uranus and Neptune actually have a fairly similar blue-green color. The main difference is that Neptune has a slight touch of extra blue, What the model reveals is due to a thinner layer of haze on that planet.

The study report explains that Uranus is slightly lighter because its atmosphere is somewhat “stagnant and sluggish.” This causes a methane haze to accumulate, reflecting redder portions of sunlight to a greater degree than Neptune.

“We have been able to reconstruct the most accurate representation to date of the color of Neptune and Uranus.” Patrick Irwin, a researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, said in a… launch. The study also showed that Uranus appears slightly greener during the summer and winter, when one of its poles points toward the sun, and in the spring and fall, when the sun is above the equator, it is bluer.

New space technologies are changing the picture we have of our solar system. The James Webb Space Telescope recently revealed a new image of Uranus that shows its often invisible rings and some hidden features of its atmosphere.