the only colours on this site that can be held up against a photograph
This tour
Every exoplanet colour here is a prediction. These five are not. Their reflected-light spectra were actually measured — four of them by pointing telescopes at our own solar system, Earth's from orbit looking down. Run through exactly the same maths as every exoplanet on this site, they come out the colours we already know they are. That agreement is the reason to take the rest seriously.
How picked
Hand-picked: every planet in the catalogue whose spectrum is a real measurement rather than a model, in order outward from the Sun.
Honesty
These five are measured spectra. Every other tour is modelled — physics-derived predictions, not photographs.
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measured
Earth
Sun · 5,772 K · G2 VSpectrum: measured
Home, seen the way this site sees every other planet: as a single average colour. Ocean, cloud and land blur together into one pale blue-white — the 'pale blue dot', arrived at by maths rather than sentiment.
EDITOR'S NOTEIf we had got Earth wrong, nothing else here would be worth reading.
Ammonia clouds over a deep hydrogen atmosphere, reflecting broadly across the visible with a warm tilt: the cream-tan every telescope photograph shows.
EDITOR'S NOTEThe reference planet for the whole gas-giant family — most modelled giants here are, in effect, Jupiter moved to a different star.
Cold enough for methane to dominate. Methane absorbs red light, so what returns is the blue-green left behind — the ice-giant signature that makes distant exoplanets identifiable by colour alone.
EDITOR'S NOTEThe pale, washed-out end of methane blue: the haze above the methane mutes it.
HOW THESE 5 WERE PICKED
Hand-picked: every planet in the catalogue whose spectrum is a real measurement rather than a model, in order outward from the Sun.