Uranus
Who discovered Uranus?
Uranus was discovered by William Herschel. The first planet found with the aid of a telescope, on March 13, 1781, while surveying the night sky, Herschel noted a faint object that moved slowly against the backgrounds stars several nights. William Herschel originally thought it was either a comet or a star. It is a beautiful blue-green color because of the methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere.
What is Uranus?
Uranus is an Ice Giant planet with a radius of 15,759.2 miles, 80% of its mass is a mix of water, ammonia ice, and methane. Uranus has two sets of rings, the inner system of nine rings consists mostly of narrow, dark grey rings. There are two outer rings: the innermost one is reddish like dusty rings elsewhere in the solar system, and the outer ring is blue like Saturn’s E ring. It is known as the “sideways planet” because it rotates on its side because of an assumed collision that it had with an Earth-sized object a long time ago. It is four times bigger than the Earth, if Earth was the size of a nickel, imagine Uranus as big as a softball.
When was Uranus discovered?
Uranus was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel. It took Uranus two years later to be universally accepted as a new planet, in part because of observations by astronomer Johann Elert Bode.
Where does Uranus orbit?
Uranus orbits our Sun, a star, and is the seventh planet from the Sun at a distance of about 1.8 billion miles.
How long does it take Uranus to orbit the sun?
Uranus rotates once every 17 hours (a Uranian day), and it takes 84 Earth years to complete one orbit of the Sun (a Uranian year).
Citations
- William Herschel — Google Search. Google.com. (2021). Retrieved 24 June 2021, from https://www.google.com/search?q=william+herschel&sxsrf=ALeKk00czUhHVFNd3Sv4wUXnn4WqSPrJNw:1624503967131&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjA9JXvpK_xAhUTG80KHV1EBEoQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1440&bih=715#imgrc=lyN84pmJ2YyqxM&imgdii=KE6RRR9pmSk-SM.
- Uranus. NASA Solar System Exploration. (2021). Retrieved 24 June 2021, from https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/uranus/overview/.
- Why Is Uranus Colder Than Neptune Despite Neptune Being Farther From The Sun?. Science ABC. (2021). Retrieved 24 June 2021, from https://www.scienceabc.com/nature/universe/uranus-colder-neptune.html.
