See a sunset on Uranus, other worlds (and a moon, too) in this NASA simulator

[Admin]

If you watched the sun set on Uranus, the sky would start off as a brilliant blue and fade into deeper blues with striking turquoise notes. So how do we know that?

See a sunset on Uranus, other worlds (and a moon, too) in this NASA simulator : Read more

 

[Helio]

That's impressive, but Mars has a tricky atmosphere. Red light is scattered far more than blue light, hence the caramel color for the atmosphere except near the Sun. Here is a NASA near true color image from Mars.

Earth is the opposite with scattering, where blue light is scattered far more than the longer wavelengths. The extreme visible red light scatters perhaps 8 or 9x more than the far blue light we see.

The reason for the scattering differences is due to what is known as "selective scattering" where the particle sizes in the atmosphere are of a size that closely matches a certain wavelength. For Mars the particle sizes (CO2, IIRC) are about that of red light so red light scatters away leaving blue light adjacent to the Sun.

 

[johnmiller]

Of course, you can't watch the sunset "on" Uranus, since it's a gas giant. Maybe you could watch while floating at its cloud tops.

 

[Lovethrust]

I always thought the sunset on Uranus would be brown...

 

[Helio]