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Asked by to Sarah, Sam, Roberto, Nate, Nat on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Sarah Casewell answered on 23 Jun 2014:
It’s because their atmospheres are made of different things!
Different molecules reflect and scatter different wavelengths of light so all the gas planets look different depending on their atmospheric composition. Neptune is blue because there is a lot of methane in there.Mars looks red because of all the iron on the surface. Venus is yellowish because of the thick atmosphere full of carbon dioxide and sulphur.
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Sam Connolly answered on 23 Jun 2014:
The planets are different colours because their surfaces are made of different things. Mars looks red because it’s covered in rocks with a lot of oxidised iron, which is another word for rust, like you get on a bike if you leave it outside too long in the rain. Jupiter is mainly Hydrogen and Helium, which don’t have much colour, but the clouds on top have other, coloured gases in them, like phosphorus, sulphur, ammonium and water, so that’s what we see, in the same way that a lot of the Earth usually looks white because the clouds are on top. Different gases give different colours, which is why other gas giants look different – Neptune and Uranus have more water and methane than Jupiter and Saturn, so look less yellow/orange and more blue. Rocky objects with less iron than Mars look more grey, like the Moon, Mercury and Pluto. And the earth looks blue and green in between the clouds because of the sea and the plants 🙂
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Natasha Stephen answered on 25 Jun 2014:
Because they have different compositions.
The planets are made up of different things and this is what gives them their colours primarily. The gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) are mainly gas with small rocky cores in the middle. Their colours are defined by the types of gas that make up their planets and their atmospheres. This is a bit different on the terrestrial, rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) because we have a solid surface surrounding a metal core. The colours of these planets is determined both by the atmosphere if it is thick but more importantly by what is on the surface of the planets!
Think about Earth and how it looks from Space in some of the famous images taken. We look blue-green because of the land and oceans on the Earth’s surface and you can sometimes see clouds in the atmosphere around Earth as well!
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