Uranus

Uranus is the 7th planet from the Sun. The planet Uranus has a diameter of 32,000 miles. At a distance of 1.782 billion miles,  it takes 84 years to circle the Sun. One day lasts 23 hours of Earth time. Voyager 2 acquired this view of the seventh planet while departing the Uranian system in late January 1986.  PHOTO / NASA

Facts about Uranus

A. Uranus is named after the Roman god of' the sky. Uranus was discovered in 1781 by Sir William Herschel by careful observation of the heavens. He saw an object in his telescope which was disk-shaped and too large to be a star. After several months it became apparent to astronomers that this was a planet because it moved against the background stars but didn't grow a tail like a comet did.

B. Uranus is a relatively featureless, pale blue planet. It lacks the cloud bands that are distinctive on the surface of Saturn and Jupiter. Part of the reason for this is it has a rotation about its axis that is almost in the plane of its orbit. In other words, whereas most planets, including Earth, spin almost directly up and down with respect to their orbital path, Uranus has been pushed over on its side and is spinning with its north or south pole occasionally pointing directly at the sun. This rotational pattern keeps Uranus from having a dynamic weather pattern. Half of the planet has almost constant heating for half the year, whereas most planets have the entire planet covered with partial heating over very short periods of rotation. This odd rotation was probably caused by the impact of a large object early in the formation of the planet.

C. Most of the moons of Uranus are named for characters in Shakespearean plays. There are moons named after Juliet and Puck, as well as other famous characters. Two of the moons are named after characters in Pope's Rape of the Lock, Umbrial and Belinda

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