Amazing Facts about Uranus

Uranus is the first planet that is discovered with the use of a telescope and is the seventh planet from the Sun.  It has an axial tilt of 98 degrees and is described as “rolling around the Sun on its side”.

Facts about Uranus

1. Uranus was discovered in the year 1781, by Sir William Herschel, at first he thought that it was a comet.  Astronomer Johann Bode suggested the name Uranus for the planet.  Uranus name comes from Greek deity Ouranos.

2.  Uranus completes it’s rotation in 17 hours, 14 minutes and in a retrograde direction.

3.  Uranus takes 84 Earth years to make one trip around the Sun.

4.  Uranus is pale blue in color, which is due to the presence of water, ammonia and the methane ice crystals in its upper atmosphere.

5.  Uranus nickname is  “ice giant” planet, which is a gas giant, whose upper layer mostly consists of hydrogen with some amount of helium.  Below this, there is an icy mantle, which surrounds a rocky  ice core.

6.  Uranus is the coldest planet in our solar system with minimum atmospheric temperature of -224 °C.  Methane haze, present in the upper atmosphere of Uranus hides the storms that take place in the clouds.

7.  Uranus has two sets of rings which are very thin and there are nine inner rings and two outer rings.

8.  Oberon, Titania and Miranda are the Uranus moons, which are named after the characters created by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

9.  Moons of Uranus are frozen worlds with dark surfaces, some of them are rock and ice mixtures.

10.  Miranda an Uranus moon has terraces, ice canyons and other strange looking surface areas.

11.  The voyager 2 spacecraft was the only one spacecraft that has flown by Uranus.  The spacecraft swept past a distance of 81,500 km.

12.  Uranus is the second least dense planet with a density of 1.27  g/cm³, first comes Saturn.

13.  Gravitational force on Uranus is less than that of Earth’s, which is due to its low density.

14.  Unlike any of the other planets,Uranus spins horizontally.

Statistical facts about Uranus

15.  Uranus is heavier than Earth, it has a mass of 86,810,300,000,000,000 billion kg.

16.  Uranus polar diameter is 49,946 kilometers.

17.  Uranus equatorial diameter is 51,118 kilometers.

18.  Uranus equatorial circumference is 159,354 kilometers.

19.   Uranus has 27 satellites, the notable ones are Oberon, Titania, Miranda, Ariel and Umbriel.

20.  Uranus orbit period is 30,687.15 Earth days, which is 84.02 Earth years.

21.  Uranus orbit distance is 2,870,658,186 kilometers.

22.  Surface temperature on Uranus is -216°C.

Also read: All the articles on Amazing facts about Nature and Planets