History of Uranus
The planet Uranus got its name from the ancient Greek deity of the sky, the father of Cronus know as Saturn, and the grandfather of Zeus known as Jupiter. It was visible to the naked eye like the five terrestrial planets. It would have never been recognized as a planet because of its also orbit and its dimness. William Herschel announced that it was discovered on March 13, 1781. Uranus was the first planet to get discovered by a telescope. It had been seen a lot ,but people ignored it because they thought it was just an ordinary star. Uranus is the only gas giant planet whose equator's nearly at a right angles to its orbit.
About Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and the 3rd largest in the solar system. It was long mistaken as just a star because of the planet’s dimness and orbit. Uranus is the only gas giant planet whose equators nearly at a right angles to its orbits. Uranus has a diameter of 51,118 miles. Uranus' twin planet is Neptune. Uranus has more methane which gives its blue tint. Like the other gas and ice giants, Uranus has thick cloud cover. Uranus also has rings, though they don’t stretch out as far as Saturn rings. The rings of Uranus are made up of black dust particles and large rocks. Uranus' atmosphere is composed of 83% hydrogen, 15% helium, 2% methane and small amounts of other hydrocarbons and acetylene. Uranus' distance from the sun is 19.2 AU and its density is 1.27g/cm. The temperature on Uranus is about -210° C. Its surface gravity is 79% of Earth’s gravity.
Uranus Seasons and Axis
Its axis rotates about once every 17 hours 14 minutes. Uranus takes about 84.3 years to complete one full revolution around the sun. One of the unique things about Uranus is that it rotates on it sides. All the planets are titled on their axis to some degree, but Uranus is the most extreme one that has a tilted axis of 98°. About halfway through that 84 -year period, the poles are reversed. The south pole faces the sun and the north pole is in darkness for 21 years. Except for a small band near the equator, every place on Uranus has winter periods of constant darkness and summer periods of constant daylight. But, during spring and fall, Uranus has periods of both daytime and nighttime just like on Earth.
Some of Uranus' Moons.
Uranus has 27 moons, five of these are large and the rest are smaller The largest moon is Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda. Uranus has been visited by the spacecraft Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986. Voyager 2 discovered ten small moons besides the five large ones that are already known. It is very likely that there are a lot more tiny satellites within the rings. One of Uranus' largest moon is Titania. It has small impact craters and long, tall cracks scar it’s icy crust. The cracks might have formed by the gravity of Uranus and its other moons pulled and twisted Titania. But the most interesting moon may be Miranda, which has canyons that are at least 12 miles deep. It has to have been shaped the same way Titanita was. Miranda is Uranus’s fifth largest moon. It has the diameter of about 470 km. It is covered with different types of icy crust.