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Neptune, for example, has an atmosphere made of hydrogen and helium (with just a tinge of methane), and it doesn’t really have a surface—or, at least, not what we think of as a surface.
Neptune's atmosphere is faintly blue in the optical spectrum, only slightly more saturated than the blue of Uranus's atmosphere. Early renderings of the two planets greatly exaggerated Neptune's colour contrast "to better reveal the clouds, bands and winds", making it seem deep blue compared to Uranus's off-white.
In the 1990s, it was determined that Uranus and Neptune were a distinct class of giant planet, separate from the other giant planets, Jupiter and Saturn, which are gas giants predominantly composed of hydrogen and helium. [1] Neptune and Uranus are now referred to as ice giants. Lacking well-defined solid surfaces, they are primarily composed ...
Mini-Neptune: Also known as a gas dwarf or transitional planet. A planet up to 10 Earth masses, but less massive than Uranus and Neptune. Mini-Neptunes have thick hydrogen–helium atmospheres, probably with deep layers of ice, rock or liquid oceans (made of water, ammonia, a mixture of both, or heavier volatiles). HD 63433 c: Mega-Earth
Around Neptune's equator, a thin bright line may indicate where the atmosphere is warming, and thus glowing at infrared wavelengths, compared to the surrounding gas, which is cooler, according to ...
Uranus has more hydrogen and helium than Neptune despite being less massive overall. Neptune is therefore denser and has much more internal heat and a more active atmosphere. The Nice model, in fact, suggests that Neptune formed closer to the Sun than Uranus did, and should therefore have more heavy elements.
New research unveils a surprising twist in the composition of our Solar System’s distant giants.
The outermost portion of their hydrogen atmosphere contains many layers of visible clouds that are mostly composed of water (despite earlier consensus that there was no water anywhere in the Solar System besides Earth) and ammonia. The layer of metallic hydrogen located in the mid-interior makes up the bulk of every gas giant and is referred to ...