Here’s What Neptune Actually Looks Like Because Our Photos Have Been ‘Wrong’ All Along

Amaze Lab

Neptune is way, way out there, orbiting the Sun some 2.8 billion miles away. That’s likely why a new analysis of some old photos of the ice giant have just revealed something a bit funny: We’ve been wrong about what it looked like all along.

Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:04 Neptune is way, way out there, orbiting the sun

00:06 some 2.8 billion miles away.

00:09 And that's likely why a new analysis

00:10 of some old photos of the ice giant

00:12 have just revealed something a bit funny.

00:14 We've been wrong about what it looked like all along.

00:17 The new revelation stems from a simple query by astronomers.

00:20 Why do Neptune and Uranus look so different,

00:22 given the atmospheric situation on both planets

00:25 is nearly identical?

00:26 So researchers reprocessed photos

00:28 taken from Voyager 2 back in the day

00:30 and used new images via Hubble and the Very Large Telescope's

00:33 multi-unit spectroscopic explorer to confirm it.

00:36 And sure enough, Neptune appears to be a near-identical twin

00:39 to Uranus.

00:40 So what happened when they first processed the photos?

00:43 Here's what planetary scientist Patrick Irwin

00:45 had to say about that.

00:46 Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus

00:48 were published in a form closer to true color,

00:51 those of Neptune were, in fact, stretched and enhanced

00:54 and therefore made artificially too blue.

00:56 The instrumentation on Voyager 2 actually

00:58 took photos of the two planets in different color bands,

01:01 meaning when processed, Neptune's contrast

01:03 was emphasized.

01:04 This deepened its hue, producing the images we've previously

01:08 been more familiar with.

01:10 (upbeat music)

01:13 [MUSIC]

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