Hold on, planet Neptune isn't dark blue?

For years we've thought that the planet Neptune was a deep blue, but after a recent scientific study by the University of Oxford, it appears we've been living a lie. In fact, it turns out that Neptune is very close in colour to its planetary pal Uranus, in reality appearing as a powdery blue. 

While NASA uses the best camera to capture these space spectacles (okay, you won't find the Hubble Space Telescope on our list, but who's quibbling?), the misconception arose from a series of visuals taken in the 20th century. These single-colour images were later recombined to create a balanced true-colour representation, but in the case of Neptune, the filtering was off, leading to the widespread misbelief of its deep blue hue. 

The research to unveil the truth was completed by the University of Oxford's Department of Physics, led by Professor Patrick Irwin. Alongside his team, Irwin compiled visual data from the Hubble Space Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. Using this information, the team were able to create a more concise colour representation of Neptune. 

The study's reprocessed images show that Neptune's True colours consist of a light blue shade similar to the colour that we traditionally attribute to Uranus. The powdery colour is complete with a light layer of white haze that's a subtle difference from Uranus, but foremost the appearances of both are strikingly similar. For more news that's out of this world, take a look at NASA's amazing 3D billboard or check out the football club that roasted Elon Musk's stolen SpaceX logo.