Our ideas of the colors of the planets Neptune and Uranus have been wrong, research led by UK astronomers reveals.

Axar.az reports that iImages from a space mission in the 1980s showed Neptune to be a rich blue and Uranus green.

However, a study has discovered that the two ice giant planets are both similar shades of greenish blue.

It has emerged that the earlier images of Neptune had been enhanced to show details of the planet's atmosphere, which altered its true color.

"They did something that I think everyone on Instagram will have done at some time in their life, they tweaked the colors," Prof Catherine Heymans, Astronomer Royal for Scotland and a University of Edinburgh astrophysics professor told BBC Radio 4's Today.

"They accentuated the blue just to reveal the features that you can see in Neptune's atmosphere, and that's why the image looks very blue, but in reality, Neptune is pretty similar to Uranus."