Colours of the planets: quick answers Mercury: grey Venus: golden brown Earth: blue Mars: red Jupiter: yellow, brown, red Saturn: yellow, brown, grey Uranus: cyan Neptune: blue Take our own Earth, for instance. From space, it appears as a small blue dot. But that’s largely a result of its atmosphere, and the huge proportion of its surface that’s covered with liquid water. Mercury's grey colour is understandable because it’s similarly composed mostly of iron, nickel and silicates. Venus, on the other hand, would also look greyish if you were standing on the surface. Mars, of course, is known as the Red Planet for a reason, in that it appears undeniably red even through small telescopes on Earth. Being rich in iron oxide, the Martian regolith is indeed a kind of reddish, sandy colour – and like Mercury, its thin atmosphere means the colour on the ground is also what we see from space. But Venus's atmosphere is dense and replete with blue light-absorbing clouds of sulphuric acid, so when viewed through a telescope, it has a golden, orange-y hue. From the ground, at its best Venus looks like a bright star visibile in the morning or early evening, which is why Venus is known as the morning or evening star. Things get more complicated when you move out to Jupiter and Saturn, because these gas giants don’t have a solid surface you could stand on. They’re comprised mostly of hydrogen and helium, and it’s the relative proportions of these gases (along with clouds of other trace elements) that give the planets, when viewed from Earth, their distinctive banded, grey-and-brown appearance. Jupiter appears to have yellow and brown stripes, and is covered with swirling white and red storms (including its biggest bright red storm the Great Red Spot). Saturn exhibits pastel colours in stripes and bands much more subtle than those of Jupiter: yellow, grey, and brown. And of course, Saturn boasts those marvellous rings that appear different shades of grey. Uranus and Neptune are also composed mostly of gases, but unlike Jupiter and Saturn those gases include significant quantities of methane and ammonia. Its these elements (plus the presence of large quantities of various ices) that give Uranus and Neptune their blue-ish hues. Uranus is an almost undifferentiated shade of pale cyan while Neptune’s deeper darker blue is scattered with white storm clouds. Pluto is a dwarf planet and not considered to be one of the planets of the Solar System, but we do have an idea what colour it is. In 2015, images of Pluto captured by the New Horizons spacecraft during its close approach to the planet revealed large dark red patches, but also light yellows, blues and greys. In 2018, NASA released a newly-processed version of the images to show a true colour image of Pluto based on what the human eye would see. This revealed Pluto to be patches of dark brown and grey.
Like stars, planets are celestial bodies, but they cannot produce light on their own, therefore light from the sun is needed to illuminate them. There are 8 planets in the solar system. The list of largest planets in the solar system in order of size are Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Earth, Venus, Mars and Mercury.
by at 2024-10-22 16:13:55