How come is it...

[Leslie]

When we see Venus from Earth, it is blue. Yet in it's own atmosphere, it's yellow-orange. When photographed with UV light filters, it's blue. And with the atmospheric conditions removed, it's grey.

One would assume that the blue was to do with our atmosphere and how it filters colour, no? Didn't I learn something like that somewhere? That that was why the sky is blue, and the water seems blue...

Then...how come is it that we see Mars as red? And in it's own atmosphere, it's still red? And with the atmospheric conditions removed, it's still the same red?

 

[unclehobart]

In visible light, Venus is a bland, yellow-white planet. Venus' atmosphere is 96 percent carbon dioxide but it is the thick cloud layer of sulfuric acid droplets that reflects back about 70 percent of the sunlight and make Venus brighter than any other object in our sky besides the Moon and the Sun (in fact Venus can be seen in broad daylight if the Earth's atmosphere above you is very clear). Venus' cloud layer extends from 30 kilometers to 60 kilometers above the surface. Below 30 kilometers Venus' atmosphere is clear because the high temperature near the surface evaporates any cloud droplets that drop too far. What sunlight that makes it through the clouds, has an orange tinge to it because the blue colors are absorbed by the clouds. The sulfuric acid may be from sulfur compounds, possibly from volcanoes, that chemically react with the trace amounts of water vapor left in the atmosphere.

http://www.astronomynotes.com/solarsys/s5.htm

 

[chcr]

And mars is red because the surface is red, the atmosphere is very thin and it's usually quite clear.

 

[Leslie]

I have to absorb that Rob. Lotsa big words for a tiny little mind

*curses grade 6 science*