Is the sky on other planets as green as on Earth?

Before talking about the atmosphere of other planets, let's find out what the atmosphere is.

Usually the atmosphere is understood as the outermost layer of a planet. In planets with a solid surface like Earth, the atmosphere is the lightest and thinnest layer.

The characteristics of the atmosphere are determined by its composition. The atmosphere has no rocks or waves, but the atmosphere consists of gases.

Earth's atmosphere is divided into many layers.

What is in the atmosphere?

The atmosphere can contain a lot of gases. The main component of the Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen (nitrogen), which hardly reacts to anything, so it is also called inert gas. Next, the Earth's atmosphere has oxygen, which we need to breathe. In addition, there are two other important gases: argon (argon) and carbon dioxide (carbon dioxide, abbreviated as CO ₂ ). Finally, a very small amount includes many other gases.

The mix of gases creates the color of the atmosphere.

The Earth's atmosphere contains gases that tend to reflect blue light in all directions (called dispersion ), but still allow most of the other colors of light to pass through. This scattered light creates the green of the Earth's atmosphere.

So do other planets have a blue atmosphere? Certainly some other planets also.

Other planets

The atmosphere of the two giant planets in our solar system is Neptune and Uranus are very beautiful blue but their colors are different from the green of the Earth. That's because they have lots of methane around them.

Uranus' atmosphere (left) is more green than Neptune (right).

Jupiter and Saturn's atmosphere is completely different. The rock crystals have a chemical composition of ammonia (ammonia) in the outermost layer of Saturn's atmosphere, making Saturn pale yellow.

Uranus's atmosphere also has some ammonia, so the planet is blue to green , not dark blue like Neptune.

Jupiter's atmosphere has a characteristic brown color interspersed with orange strips, which is because the gases here contain phosphorus (sulfur) and even sulfur (chemical compounds). learn hydrocarbons (hydrocarbons).

In some special cases, the entire planet is just a giant atmosphere without a solid surface. Astronomers and planetary scientists are still trying to figure out whether Jupiter and Saturn have solid surfaces under the atmosphere or if they are just giant gas balls.

The Cassini spacecraft captured this image of Saturn in 2010.

However , there are still some planets that have no atmosphere . The nearest neighbor of the Sun is Mercury, for example, its surface in direct contact with the vast universe.

Outside our solar system

We have talked about the planets' atmospheres in the solar system. What about planets in other systems, planets orbiting other stars?

Astronomers have been studying the atmospheres of these planets (they are called 'exoplanets' ) for more than 20 years. However, it was not until last year that they decided to focus on exploring the atmosphere of a solid-surface exoplanet. The planet is named LHS 3844b and it is so far away that the light from it would take 50 years to reach Earth.

LHS 3844b is twice as heavy as Earth and astronomers believe its atmosphere is quite dense. Surprisingly, it has almost no atmosphere, so it is more like Mercury than Earth.

There are still many things we need to learn about distant planets and discovering somewhere with Earth-like atmosphere to get ready for life is still a very long search journey.

• Explore the planetary atmospheric environment in the Solar System