Why are the two normal looking planets in our solar system different in colour?

Neptune and Uranus, located at a greater distance from the Sun, which have different colors even after having a normal atmosphere, the structure of both Neptune and Uranus are very similar in every respect, but still their colors are different, why is it so? Let us know in detail about Neptune and Uranus before understanding this. There are four gaseous planets in our solar system, which the discoverers called gas giants, because they consist mostly of gas rather than clay, and their size is very large, including Neptune and Uranus, although they are smaller than both Saturn and Jupiter.

Uranus was discovered by William Herschel on March 13, 1781, Uranus is the first planet in the Solar System, which was observed by telescope, and while Neptune is such a planet in the Solar System, which was predicted to exist without being seen, and Neptune was first seen by telescope on 23 September 1846. Talk about the structure of Neptune and Uranus, where the planet Uranus is visible only in the form of a sphere, on which there are no marks or spots, the changes in it cannot be seen easily, but storms and weather changes on Neptune can be seen.

Most of the gas is found in the atmosphere of Neptune and Uranus, due to which researchers call both of them gas giants, Neptune and Uranus have more ice than Saturn and Jupiter, in addition to water ice, ammonia and Methane gases also have ice. The atmosphere of Uranus has been found to be the coldest of all the planets in the Solar System, its minimum temperature has been observed to be -49 Kelvin (ie -224 °C), researchers believe that there are clouds of water below Uranus, and Above all are clouds of methane gas, if we can somehow see in the center of Uranus, then we can get to see ice and stones in its center.

Neptune appears in the shape of a sphere, weather changes in it cannot be seen, because there are no marks or spots on it, but it is a planet where the storm wind blows faster than the rest of the planets, its speeds of up to 2,100 km per hour have been observed. In 1989, when Voyager II passed by Neptune, it saw a “big thick spot” on Neptune, which was actually a storm, researchers have compared this storm to Jupiter’s large red spot ‘Great Red Spot’. Due to the large size of Neptune, the force of gravity creates a tremendous pressure in its center, this pressure is so high that the temperature reaches 5,000 °C, researchers believe that the light blue color of Neptune is due to methane gas.

Researchers have developed a single atmospheric model to understand the distinct coloration of Neptune and Uranus, which matches observations of both planets, researchers have developed a single atmospheric model for the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, as well as Gemini Data from the North Telescope and the NASA Infrared Telescope have been used. A new research suggests that a concentrated haze layer exists on both planets, and that this layer is thicker on Uranus than on Neptune, the reason why Uranus appears ‘white’ compared to Neptune. The researchers suggest, if the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus did not have haze, the scattering of blue light in the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus would result in both appearing almost equally blue. An international team led by Patrick Irwin, professor of planetary physics at the University of Oxford, has developed a new model to describe the aerosol layers in the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus.

Previous models focused only on the presence of specific wavelengths in the upper atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus, but the new model incorporates multiple atmospheric layers, and both correspond to a wide range of planetary wavelengths, The new model also includes particles of haze within deeper layers, which researchers previously believed to be clouds of methane and hydrogen sulfide ions. This is the first model to fit together observations of reflected sunlight from ultraviolet to near-infrared wavelengths, says Irwin, lead author of the paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: The difference in visible color between Uranus and Neptune, Helps to explain.

Created by the team, the new model includes three layers of aerosols at different heights, with the middle layer influencing the color because it is a layer of haze particles, comparable to Neptune. Uranus is thicker. The team suspects that methane ice condenses on particles in the middle crust of both planets, and that the methane ice showers drag the particles deeper into the atmosphere. Neptune’s atmosphere is more active, and turbulent, than that of Uranus, which the team believes is more efficient at churning methane particles into the haze layer and producing ice. At the same time, Neptune’s atmosphere removes more haze, due to which the haze layer of Neptune remains thinner than that of Uranus, and this is the reason, that the blue color of Neptune appears stronger than that of Uranus.

An astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley Mike Wong, who is also a member of this new model team, said, “We hoped that by developing the new model, it could help us understand clouds and haze in the vast ice environment.” Irwin’s team analyzed archival data spanning several years from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope to create this new model.