New Photos Show Blazingly Bright Uranus & Neptune in Infrared

The distant “ice giant” planets Uranus and Neptune look like worlds aflame in new photos captured by Hawaii’s Keck Observatory.

To the naked eye, Neptune would appear blue and Uranus bluish-green. But Caltech astronomer Mike Brown snapped the new pictures in infrared light, using Keck’s adaptive optics system. So the two planets blaze reddish-orange, like embers glowing in the dark night of deep space.

Brown posted the pictures via Twitter from Sept. 18 to Sept. 20. Two shots show bright streaks on Neptune, which is about 17 times as massive as Earth and orbits 30 times farther from the sun than our planet does.

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(Source: ikenbot, via myheadisweak)