Gas Giant Colors And Bands

[DarkLordSkippy]

Is there anything which affects the colors and band widths on the gas giants? Or is this totally random?

[EDG]

Are you asking about in the program, or in reality?

In reality, yes - composition and temperature affect the colours. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudarsky_e ... sification for info.

Banding will be affected by things like atmospheric haze (high altitude haze will hide the bands, as in the case of Uranus IIRC), and hot jupiters in torch orbits will have much more turbulent patterns on them due to winds caused by the obscenely high temperatures of their day side.

[DarkLordSkippy]

Sorry, EDG, you're right. I should have been more specific (though, still....good to know).

No, I actually meant within the program itself.

[Ed_NBOS]

In the program, the colors are random

[neopeius]

Gas giants should be specific colors depending on their temperature. Does the program model this?

Also, has the planet-generating algorithm been updated based on the latest data (i.e. the proportion of stars with planets, the relation of metalicity to planets, etc.)?

Just curious--it's a fascinating field, and it'd be cool if the program was kept abreast of the latest developments.

[Skaran]

Technically the brown dwarfs now need to be split into different spectral classes based on temperature as there are now three - L, T & Y though some M class stars may also be brown dwarfs rather than true stars.
Brown dwarfs may also show banding if the artists illustrations on www.solstation.com are reasonable.