both planets are actually a comparable shade of greenish blue. well, to help us understand this, i mjoined by professor catherine heymans. she s the astronomer royal for scotland, and a professor of astrophysics at the university of edinburgh. hello to you. thank you very much forjoining us. hello to you. thank you very much forjoining m hello to you. thank you very much forjoining ve for “oining us. please explain, why did forjoining us. please explain, why did we think forjoining us. please explain, why did we think they forjoining us. please explain, why did we think they were forjoining us. please explain, why did we think they were these - did we think they were these different colours to begin with? these images that we are used to seeing are from the voyager two nation. it was a nasa spacecraft that was launched in the late 70s and took images of uranus and neptune in the late 80s by the time it got there. now, the way you and i see colour is we have photo re
around the sun. uranus is different from all the other ones in that it doesn t stand on its top, it is on its side. it got knocked over at some point in the past and the solar system and it s basically rolling around the sun. and that means that the atmosphere in the polls and around the equator can be quite different, and there has been a bit of a mystery for a while depending on where uranus is in its cycle as it orbits around the sun, it takes 84 earth years to go all the way around the sun, depending on where it is and the cycle, it is slightly greener or slightly bluer. and the team at oxford university have shown that this comes because of the ice methane in the atmosphere. so these are ice giants, it s absolutely freezing out there, and the methane in the atmosphere freezes and falls as snow. depending on where it is in its cycle to me see these very slightly different colours. it s a