Uranus gets its blue-green color from methane gas in the atmosphere. Sunlight passes through the atmosphere and is reflected back out by Uranus' cloud tops. Methane gas absorbs the red portion of the light, resulting in a blue-green color.
Atmosphere. Neptune's atmosphere is made up mostly of hydrogen and helium with just a little bit of methane. Neptune's neighbor Uranus is a blue-green color due to such atmospheric methane, but Neptune is a more vivid, brighter blue, so there must be an unknown component that causes the more intense color.
Uranus: It is about four times the size of the earth. It appears greenish in color due to the presence of methane gas in its atmosphere. It is the seventh planet from the Sun.
Uranus' atmosphere is made up of hydrogen, helium, and methane. The temperature in the upper atmosphere is very cold. The cold methane gas is what gives Uranus its blue-green color. The rapid rotation of Uranus causes winds up to 600 kilometers per hour to blow in its atmosphere.
Earth is known as the 'blue planet' because of the vast oceans that cover two-thirds of its surface.
Uranus and Neptune are similar planets in many ways. Both are ice giant worlds, both have atmospheres rich in methane, and both have a bluish color. But while Uranus has a pale blue-green hue, Neptune has a deep blue color. But why?
It appears blue because the oceans reflect blue light, and they cover most of its surface. It appears green in some areas because plantlife covers much of the land area, and plants reflect green light.
Neptune, the other blue planet, is the eighth planet in our solar system. Neptune is an ice giant.
Neptune's deep blue. Why, scientists wondered, isn't Uranus too? It's an intriguing question. Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets of our solar system, are both ice giants — cold worlds that are part gas, part ice, with similar chemical compositions.
Even the gas giants are different, Neptune and Uranus an opaque blue, while Jupiter and Saturn are mostly beige with brilliant red-brown belts. But why are these planets so different? As it turns out, stars and their planets form at the same time from a disk of gas and dust known as a solar nebula.
The planets Uranus and Neptune are also blue, due to the light reflected by methane in the atmospheres of those ice giants.
Named GJ 504b, the planet is made of pink gas. It's similar to Jupiter, a giant gas planet in our own solar system. But GJ 504b is four times more massive. At 460°F, it's the temperature of a hot oven, and it's the planet's intense heat that causes it to glow.
A purple planet! Actually, the color suggestion is just speculation based on the planet's expected chemical composition. The planet, called WASP-104b, orbits 4 million km from its yellow dwarf parent star every 1.75 days.
Objects that reflect no sunlight are black. Consequently, HD 149026b might be the blackest known planet in the Universe, in addition to the hottest. The temperature of this dark and balmy planet was taken with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.
Saturn's northern hemisphere is a serene blue, more befitting of Uranus or Neptune, as seen in this natural color image from Cassini. Images obtained using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this view.
Other worlds
The atmospheres of the two ice giants in our solar system, Neptune and Uranus, are both beautiful shades of blue.
Pluto is shown in a rainbow of colors that distinguish the different regions on the planet. The left side of the planet is mostly blue-green with purple swirls, while the right side ranges from a vibrant yellow-green at the top to a reddish orange toward the bottom."
The Greeks named the fourth planet 'Mars' as the 'bloody planet' or a 'red planet' because this planet shines in sky with red colour resembling blood. Mars is a hot, dry, fiery and violent planet.
It's a super Earth whose upper atmosphere reaches 500 degrees Fahrenheit (260 degrees Celcius), meaning it only gets hotter as you move down. It's barely a hair away from its star, completing a year in 1.6 Earth days. Life is incredibly unlikely to survive there.
NASA has taken a closer look at 55 Cancri e, an exoplanet that earned the nickname "diamond planet" due to research that suggests it has a carbon-rich composition.
NASA announced the news on their website this week, after confirming the teenager's work, submitting a paper that Cukier co-authored for scientific review and announcing the discovery of the planet, now named “TOI 1338 b,” at the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting.
Beyond this boundary lies the hidden northern hemisphere of Uranus, which currently remains in total darkness as the planet rotates. The blue-green color results from the absorption of red light by methane gas in Uranus' deep, cold and remarkably clear atmosphere.
Saturn is also a giant gas planet with an outer atmosphere that is mostly hydrogen and helium. Its atmosphere has traces of ammonia, phosphine, water vapor, and hydrocarbons giving it a yellowish-brown color.
The predominant blue color of the planet is a result of the absorption of red and infrared light by Neptune's methane atmosphere. Clouds elevated above most of the methane absorption appear white, while the very highest clouds tend to be yellow-red as seen in the bright feature at the top of the right-hand image.