• Previous images of Neptune and Uranus, particularly from Voyager 2, were inaccurately blue and green due to image processing for detail enhancement.
  • New research analyzed data from Hubble and VLT telescopes to reveal their “true” colors are both a similar shade of greenish-blue.
  • Neptune still has a slightly bluer tinge due to a thinner haze layer.
  • Uranus may appear slightly greener in summer/winter but bluer in spring/autumn due to its unique tilt.
  • This research corrects a long-held misconception about these distant planets.
    • @brsrklf@jlai.lu
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      911 months ago

      Are you telling me we’ll have to find new words for every world’s "geo"graphy and "geo"logy too? That won’t be convenient.

      • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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        1011 months ago

        Honestly I think we should just not bother settling other planets. The headache of updating all our dictionaries won’t be worth it.

      • FaceDeer
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        611 months ago

        There already are, for example geography on Mars is areography and on the Moon it’s selenography. This post has a list of some of them.

        However, English is whatever we say it is, and most people just use “geography” for everything and specify “Martian geography” or “Lunar geography” when the distinction needs to be made.