Why uranus is blue

Related questions Which planets is least like earth in size and composition? In what ways are Terrestrial planets different from Jovian planets? Why are planets and satellite round while asteroids irregular? How does the earth's moon compare to moons of gas giant planets? Why is it important for scientist to determine the temperature ,age and composition of other The sparse rings around Neptune contain no more material than that found in a single small moon only a kilometer across.

But the rings can easily be replaced by debris blasted off small moons already embedded in them. The five major moons of Uranus are dark and dense, made up predominantly of rock and water ice. Miranda, the innermost mid-sized satellite of Uranus, exhibits a bizarre variety of surface features that suggest repeated violent impacts in the past.

It may have been shattered by catastrophic collisions and reassembled, or it became frozen in an embryonic stage of differentiation. Unlike all the other worlds, which rotate at some tilt relative to the plane of the Sun's rotation, Uranus is practically on its side, rolling like a barrel instead of spinning like a top. When the Voyager 2 spacecraft flew past Uranus in , it was solstice: the side illuminated by the Sun was one of Uranus' polar regions.

But as the years and decades ticked by, Uranus moved from solstice towards equinox, when its equatorial region would be illuminated by the Sun instead. An infrared view from the Keck Telescope shows details in the atmosphere of Uranus, the In optical light, Uranus looks like a featureless blue-green marble, because methane in its upper atmosphere absorbs red wavelengths of light.

Infrared peers through the methane haze, revealing belts of clouds plus bright storms that extend high above most of the surrounding clouds. These two views show the eastern and western hemispheres.

They also reveal Uranus's narrow rings. Since Uranus takes 84 Earth-years to complete a revolution around the Sun, that means it takes 21 Earth-years to go from solstice to equinox. With Voyager 2 flying by it at solstice in , that implied the best time to view it next would be in , when it was at equinox. We didn't have another mission ready to go at that time, but we did have the Hubble Space Telescope. As you can see, above, there are all the features you would have hoped for the first time.

There are swirling clouds, storms, and even characteristic atmospheric bands. There are dark spots and light spots, hazes and clear regions, with differential colors at different Uranian latitudes.

Instead of a monochrome, featureless world, we at last found the active atmosphere we had expected all along. Interplanetary shocks caused by two powerful bursts of solar wind travelling from the Sun to Uranus were captured with the STIS instrument. The reason for Uranus' uniform color during the solstice is because of its temperatures when it's in continuous day, which produces a haze of methane. Methane, in this state of matter, absorbs red light, which is why the reflected sunlight takes on that turquoise hue.

Simultaneously, the methane haze masks the clouds below it, which is what causes Uranus to have the featureless appearance we came to know ubiquitously after the Voyager 2 visit. With its Observing in bands other than visible light will reveal even more of its non-uniform properties.

Infrared images of Uranus showing storms at 1. Because an equinox-like Uranus will cool off during the night, the methane haze goes from being a top-layer aerosol — which is a solid or liquid particle suspended in a gas — to particles that mix with the lower atmospheric layers.

Thus, when day emerges again, the uppermost layer is partially transparent. Uranus as it was called commonly after or so was named after the Greek sky deity Ouranos, the earliest of the lords of the heavens. It is the only planet to be named after a Greek god rather than a Roman one. Before the name was settled on, many names had been proposed for the new planet, including Hypercronius "above Saturn" , Minerva the Roman goddess of wisdom and Herschel, after its discoverer.

German astronomer Johann Bode, who detailed Uranus' orbit, gave the planet its ultimate name. Bode argued that as Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the new planet should be named for the father of Saturn. Uranus is blue-green in color, as a result of the methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere.

Unlike the other planets of the solar system, Uranus is tilted so far that it essentially orbits the sun on its side, with the axis of its spin nearly pointing at the star.

This unusual orientation might be due to a collision with a planet-size body, or several small bodies, soon after it was formed. A study suggested the colliding world could have been twice the size of Earth.

This unusual tilt gives rise to extreme seasons that last for about 20 years. This means that for nearly a quarter of the Uranian year, which is equal to 84 Earth-years, the sun shines directly over each pole, leaving the other half of the planet to experience a long, dark and frigid winter.

Uranus has the coldest atmosphere of any of the planets in the solar system, even though it is not the most distant from the sun. That's because Uranus has little to no internal heat to supplement the heat from the sun.