Layers of haze particles are responsible for the different blue hues of the ice giants Neptune and Uranus.
Neptune and Uranus have much in common - they have similar masses, sizes, and atmospheric compositions - yet Neptune looks distinctly bluer than its planetary neighbour Uranus.
New research led by Professor Patrick Irwin, Department of Physics, University of Oxford suggests that a layer of haze that exists on both planets is behind the different hues of blue. If there were no haze in the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus, both would appear almost equally blue.
Using observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility, and the Gemini North telescope, an international team of researchers developed a model to describe aerosol layers in the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus.
