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Is it blueish, perfect white or some other color? I am interested because some celestial bodies are said to be covered with methane ice.

Rodrigo de Azevedo
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Anixx
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  • Are you referring to solid methane or methane clathrates? – bon Jul 16 '15 at 11:28
  • @bon to solid methane – Anixx Jul 16 '15 at 11:28
  • Very interesting question, particularly with recent discoveries in mind. –  Jul 16 '15 at 11:56
  • The answer may have to do with light scattering rather than absorption, but I'm not completely sure. – Nicolau Saker Neto Jul 16 '15 at 12:27
  • This article appears to suggest that methane ice is colourless. Scientists haven't entirely figured out what color the ice would be, though they suspect it would be colorless, as it is on Earth – bon Jul 16 '15 at 17:36
  • gaseous methane is colorless and a property like color depend on electron transfer between molecular or atomic orbitals and the energy of these orbitals is independent to temperature.so methane in solid state(low temperature and high pressure)is still colorless. – ezat Jul 17 '15 at 05:42
  • Welcome to Chemistry.SE! Take the [tour] to get familiar with this site. Mathematical expressions and equations can be formatted using $\LaTeX$ syntax. For more information in general have a look at the [help]. I do not believe this is true. For example, carbon dioxide in the gas phase is colourless, but as a solid it is shiny white. Or consider water, in its solid state the colour rages from transparent to white to blue depending on the modification (pressure). – Martin - マーチン Jul 17 '15 at 06:57
  • water in solid form can be white but i didn't see blue ice. furthermore after solidification water become turbid instead of transparent. liquid water can pass light through itself but when it become solid, solid water is turbid it is mean that light can't pass through it, because ice can't absorb light it reflect all the visible wavelength and appear white. i have same opinion about solid methane. – ezat Jul 17 '15 at 08:23
  • I was talking about the appearance, sorry to be imprecise. But here is what I was thinking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_(glacial) – Martin - マーチン Jul 17 '15 at 08:30
  • Check color of oxygen in different phases - perceived color depends strongly on concentration and in gas it's very low. – Mithoron Jul 17 '15 at 11:25

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Your question is not very specific. So the answer is it depends. Think of water as an analog.

MaxW
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