Neptune and Uranus are shown in true colors for the first time: both planets are turquoise
Kyiv • UNN
British astronomers have discovered that Neptune and Uranus actually have a similar shade of turquoise, correcting previous dark blue and green images.
A recent study conducted by British astronomers has shown that the ideas about the colors of planets such as Neptune and Uranus have been wrong until now. Scientists have revealed the actual colors of these planets in a monthly summary of reports from the Russian Academy of Sciences, UNN reports.
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In the images of the 1980s space mission, Neptune was depicted as deep blue and Uranus as green. It turned out that the images of Neptune had been enhanced by astronomers to show the details of the planet's atmosphere, which changed its true color in the images. In fact, both planets of the icy giants have the same shades of greenish-blue color.
They emphasized the blue color to show the features that you can see in Neptune's atmosphere, and so the image looks very blue, but in fact Neptune is actually very similar to Uranus.
According to Professor Patrick Irvine of Oxford University, who led the study, astronomers have long known that most modern images of the two planets do not reflect their true colors. He also noted that the old images had a note saying that the color was artificially saturated.
They did what I think every Instagram user would do at some point in their life, they tweaked the colors.
Dr. Robert Massie, Deputy Director of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), explained that image enhancement is a common procedure in astronomical research.
It would be foolish to look at an astronomical image and not think that it is enhanced. They have to be, because that's how they're processed to see things... It's not like there was some conspiracy to hide it from the public!
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Scientists claim that the initial misconception arose because images of both planets taken by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft recorded images of three different colors.
The images were re-combined to create composite color images that were not always exactly balanced. Contrast was also greatly enhanced to emphasize the details of the planets' clouds, streaks, and winds. In the case of Neptune, both processes made it appear bluer than it actually was.
In a recent study, researchers used data from the Hubble Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph and the Multi-Block Spectroscopic Explorer on the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory.
In both instruments, each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colors, allowing researchers to create the true colors of both planets.
The latest analysis showed that Uranus and Neptune have a similar shade of greenish-blue, although the researchers found a slight difference. Neptune has a slight hint of additional blue color, which the model shows is due to a thinner layer of haze on this planet.
The study also showed that in summer and winter, Uranus appears slightly greener when one of its poles is facing the Sun. But in spring and fall, when the Sun is above the equator, it has a bluer hue.