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Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan -coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, which in astronomy is called 'ice' or volatiles. The planet's atmosphere has a complex layered cloud structure and has the lowest minimum temperature of 49 K (−224 ...
- Uranus (Mythology)
In Greek mythology, Uranus (/ ˈ j ʊər ə n ə s / YOOR-ə-nəs,...
- Moons of Uranus
Uranus was the last giant planet without any known irregular...
- Atmosphere of Uranus
Atmosphere of Uranus. The atmosphere of Uranus is composed...
- Climate of Uranus
Uranus is an oblate spheroid, which causes its visible area...
- Neptune
The NEPTUNE Ocean Observatory project is part of Ocean...
- Proposed Missions
The exploration of Uranus has, to date, been through...
- Supercritical Fluid
The gaseous outer atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn...
- Talk
Uranus is a featured article; it (or a previous version of...
- Uranus (Disambiguation)
Fiction. Uranus, a 1948 novel by Marcel Aymé; Uranus, a...
- Miranda
Miranda, also designated Uranus V, is the smallest and...
- Uranus (Mythology)
Uranus, seventh planet in distance from the Sun and the least massive of the solar system’s four giant, or Jovian, planets. Uranus has more than two dozen moons, five of which (Umbriel, Miranda, Ariel, Titania, and Oberon) are relatively large, and a system of narrow rings.
- When was Uranus discovered?Uranus was discovered on March 13, 1781, by the English astronomer William Herschel with the aid of a telescope. Uranus is the first planet to be d...
- How far is Uranus from the Sun?The mean distance of Uranus from the Sun is nearly 2.9 billion km (1.8 billion miles), more than 19 times as far as Earth, and it never approaches...
- What is the average temperature in Uranus's atmosphere?On average, Uranus radiates the same amount of energy as an ideal, perfectly absorbing surface at a temperature of 59.1 kelvins (K; −353 °F, −214 °...
- How many moons and rings does Uranus have?Uranus has 27 known moons that are accompanied by at least 10 narrow rings. Generally, the rings are located closer to the planet than the moons. S...
- What is unusual about the axis of Uranus?Unlike most planets, the axis of Uranus lies almost parallel to its orbital plane, which means that the planet spins nearly on its side, its poles...
- History
- Features
- Orbit and Rotation
- Other Websites
Discovery
Uranus has been observed many times through a telescope, and even through the naked eye, but was mistaken for a star due to its slow orbit. Sir William Herschel observed Uranus on 13 March 1781 from the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in Bath, Somerset, England (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy), and first reported it (on 26 April 1781) as a comet. With a homemade 6.2-inch reflecting telescope, Herschel "engaged in a series of observations on the parallaxof the fixed stars." Her...
Exploring
In 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 visited Uranus. This is the only space probethat tried to investigate the planet from a short distance. The spacecraft studied the atmosphere of the planet.
Moons
Uranus has 27 known moons. They are named for characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. The five biggest moons are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. More moons are likely to be discovered.
Clouds
Uranus is covered in blue clouds. The top clouds, made of methane, are difficult to see.Lower clouds are thought to be frozen water. There are also violent storms. Wind speeds can reach 250 metres per second (900 km/h; 560 mph). Scientists are studying the clouds to try to understand the storms on the planet.
Rings
The planet Uranus has a system made of 13 rings, which is far fewer than the rings of Saturn but more than those around Jupiter and Neptune. The rings of Uranus were discovered in 1977. More than 200 years ago, William Herschel also reported observing rings, but modern astronomers do not believe that he saw them, because they are very dark and faint. Two additional rings were discovered in 1986 in images taken by Voyager 2, and two outer rings were found in 2003–2005 by the Hubble Space Teles...
Uranus revolves around the Sun once every 84 Earth years. Its average distance from the Sun is roughly 3 billion km (about 20 AU). The intensity of sunlight on Uranus is about 1/400 that on Earth. Its orbital elements were first calculated in 1783 by Pierre-Simon Laplace. With time, discrepancies began to appear between the predicted and observed o...
Uranus Profile Archived 2007-06-24 at the Wayback Machine by NASA's Solar System ExplorationKeck pictures of Uranus show best view from the ground Archived 2007-11-16 at the Wayback Machine— Press release with some photographs showing rings, satellites and cloudsNews reports of December 22, 2005 rings and moons discovery- 13 March 1781
- William Herschel
- Uranian (/jʊˈreɪniən/)
- the Latin form Ūranus of the Greek god Οὐρανός Ouranos
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, and it's the third largest planet in our solar system – about four times wider than Earth. The diameter at its equator is 31,763 miles (51,120 kilometers). Uranus is a very cold and windy planet. It is surrounded by faint rings, and more than two dozen small moons as it rotates at a nearly 90-degree ...
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a supercritical phase of matter, which in astronomy is called 'ice' or volatiles. The planet's atmosphere has a complex layered cloud structure and has the lowest minimum temperature of 49 K out of all the Solar System's planets. It has a marked axial ...
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