So what colour is Uranus really? |
So what colour is Uranus really? |
Oct 26 2006, 01:19 PM
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#1
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Member Group: Members Posts: 147 Joined: 14-April 06 From: Berlin Member No.: 744 |
Photos from the Voyager era show it to be on the border of blue and green, particularly greenish in some of them. On the other hand, amateur astronomers report from their backyards a definite "blue blob". So what colour would Uranus appear to human eye? Was the greenish tint made up as a distinction from Neptune? Or was it some flaw in image processing?
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Oct 26 2006, 03:44 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 509 Joined: 2-July 05 From: Calgary, Alberta Member No.: 426 |
Those occultation pictures are neat but I'm sure they've been altered a little. Look at how bright Uranus appears to be, compared with the limb of the Moon! Although Uranus is probably several times more reflective than the Moon, it also gets 400 times less sunlight. I expect its brightness has been increased to make it more visible.
A lot of kids' astronomy books portray Uranus as green and Neptune as blue, but (as has been pointed out above) this is probably just "artistic license" to help children distinguish them from each other. Uranus is blue, but it's not as blue as Neptune -- it has that touch of green to it which Neptune pretty much completely lacks. More of a cyan-blue. |
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