National Aeronautics and

Space Administration Uranus

Once considered one of the blander-looking planets, URANUS (pro- Six of Uranus’s rings were discovered in 1977 by scientists aboard Significant Dates
nounced YOOR un nus) has been revealed as a dynamic world with NASA’s Kuiper Airborne Observatory who were watching a star pass
some of the brightest clouds in the outer solar system and a fragile ring behind Uranus. They noticed the starlight winking on and off as the star 1781 Sir William Herschel (England) discovers Uranus.
system that wobbles like an unbalanced wagon wheel. Uranus gets its first appeared to move toward the planet, and then again as the star 1787 Sir William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon.
blue-green color from methane gas above the deeper cloud layers moved away from the planet. Perth Observatory found three more rings 1851 William Lassell (England) discovers Ariel and Umbriel.
(methane absorbs red light and reflects blue light). that same day, and Voyager 2 found two more rings in 1986, bringing 1948 Gerald Kuiper (U.S.) discovers Miranda.
the count to 11. The rings are in the planet’s equatorial plane, per- 1977 James Elliot (U.S.) and others discover six rings; astronomers
Uranus was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel, who pendicular to its orbit about the Sun. The 10 outer rings are dark, thin, at Perth Observatory discover three additional rings.
at first believed it to be a comet. This seventh planet from the Sun is so and narrow, while the 11th ring is inside the other ten and is broad and 1986 Voyager 2 discovers 10 small moons and 2 more rings,
distant that it takes 84 years to complete an orbit. diffuse. The rings of Uranus are very different from those surrounding detects magnetic field, and measures length of Uranian day.
Jupiter and Saturn. When viewed with the Sun behind the rings, fine 1998 Hubble Space Telescope observes clouds on Uranus and wob-
The third largest planet in our solar system, Uranus is classified as a dust can be seen scattered throughout all of the rings. ble of rings.
“gas giant” planet because it has no solid surface. The atmosphere of
Uranus is hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and Uranus has at least 21 moons, named mostly for characters from the
traces of water and ammonia. The bulk (80 percent or more) of the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Miranda is the strangest About the Images
mass of Uranus is contained in an extended liquid core consisting pri- Uranian moon. The high cliffs and winding valleys of the moon may
marily of “icy” materials (water, methane, and ammonia), with higher- indicate partial melting of the interior, with icy material occasionally (Left) False-color image taken in the near-infrared of Uranus, 4 of its
density material at depth. drifting to the surface. major rings, and 10 of its satellites [Hubble Space Telescope NICMOS,
E. Karkoschka (U. Arizona)].
In 1986, Voyager 2 observed faint cloud markings in the southern lat- (Top, center and right) Uranus appears nearly featureless in visible
itudes blowing westward between 100 and 600 km/hr. In 1998, the Fast Facts wavelengths, but through blue, orange, and green filters, a dark polar
Hubble Space Telescope observed as many as 20 bright clouds at var- hood and zonal areas in the atmosphere are apparent (Voyager 2).
ious altitudes in Uranus’s atmosphere. The bright clouds are probably Namesake Roman God, Father of the Titans (Left, center) Voyager 2 revealed a continuous distribution of small
made of crystals of methane, which condense as warm bubbles of gas Mean Distance from Sun 2.871 billion km particles throughout the Uranus ring system.
well up from deep in the atmosphere of Uranus. Orbital Period 83.75 years (Right, center and bottom) Miranda’s surface consists of two
Orbital Eccentricity 0.047 strikingly different major types of terrain. One is an old, heavily
Uranus currently moves around the Sun with its rotation axis nearly Orbital Inclination to Ecliptic 0.76986° cratered, rolling terrain with relatively uniform albedo, or reflectivi-
horizontal with respect to the ecliptic plane. This unusual orientation Inclination of Equator to Orbit 82.14° ty. The other is a young, complex terrain characterized by sets of
may be the result of a collision with a planet-sized body early in the Rotational Period 17 h 14 m (retrograde) bright and dark bands, scarps and ridges features found in the ovoid
planet’s history, which apparently changed Uranus’s rotation radically. Diameter 51,118 km regions at the top and bottom, and in the distinctive “chevron” fea-
Mass 14.535 times Earth’s mass ture above and to the right of center. The ice cliffs at right are 20 km
Uranus’s magnetic field is unusual in that the magnetic axis is tilted 60 Density 1.30 g/cm3 high (Voyager 2).
degrees from the planet’s axis of rotation and is offset from the center Gravity 0.889 of Earth’s
of the planet by one-third of the planet’s radius. Atmosphere 83% hydrogen, 15% helium, 2% methane
Atmospheric temperature at 1 Bar Pressure Level 76 K
Uranus is so far from the Sun that, even though tipped on its side and Moons (21) in Increasing Distance from Uranus
experiencing seasons that last over twenty years, the temperature dif- Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, References
ferences on the summer and winter sides of the planet do not differ Rosalind, Belinda, Puck, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, Oberon, 1) NASA Solar System Exploration: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov
that greatly. Near the cloudtops, the temperature of Uranus is near Caliban, Stephano, Sycorax, Prospero, Stebos 2) The New Solar System, 4th ed., Beatty, Petersen, Chaikin, eds., 1999.
-215 °C. Number of Rings 11 3) NASA Planetary Photojournal: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov

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