Uranus is the 7th Planet in the Solar System. It is a gas giant made from hydrogen, nitrogen, and methane. It is the reasonably large quantity of methane (2%) that gives Uranus its blue green colour.
Uranus is very peculiar in the fact that it is tilted by about 98 degrees, and we see it lying on its side as shown in the diagram below.
Uranus was the second planet found to have rings, thanks to a transition across a star that occured in 1977. During the transistion the brightness of the star kept dipping and then increasing, which was a sure sign that something other than the planet was creating this effect. From further observations it was deduced that 9 rings encircled Uranus.
The rings are too faint to be seen visually from Earth although the Voyager probe did manage to photograph the rings once it had gone past the orbit of Uranus. They were then highlighted by sunlight dispersing through them.
Uranus has 17 Moons, 5 of which are visible from Earth and range in size from 500 to 1500 km in diameter. They are called Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. The rest are considerably smaller and require large Telescopes and Hubble to be viewed.
Planetary Information
| Maximum Distance from the Sun | 3004MKms |
| Minimum Distance from the Sun | 2735MKms |
| Diameter | 51118 km |
| Mass | 14.6 |
| Sidereal period | 84y |
| Rotation period | 17h 14m |
| Velocity | 6.8 km/s |
| Gravity | 1.17 |
| Mean Temperature | -214 C |
| Number of Moons | 17 |
| Escape Velocity | 84800 km/h |