Uranus is one of the most mysterious planets in the solar system, and under favorable weather conditions it can be seen even with the naked eye, there are quite a few interesting facts that you have probably never even heard of.
1. The Uranus was observed by astronomer Friedrich William Herschel in 1781. It is the first planet discovered with the aid of a telescope. Herschel initially thought it was a comet.
2. Sir William Herschel named the new planet in honor of King George III – Georgium Sidus, which translates as “Star of George”. The modern name was proposed by the German astronomer Johann Bode and has become widely used only since 1850. The name “Uranus” comes from the name of the ancient Greek deity of the sky, he father of Cronus (Saturn) and grandfather of Zeus (Jupiter).
3. In China, Japan, and Korea, the name of the planet Uranus is translated as “sky king star.”
4. You could fit 63 planets the size of Earth inside Uranus.
5. Uranus orbits the Sun at a distance of 2.8 billion km and completes one orbital revolution around the Sun in 30 687 Earth days, which is about 84 Earth years. Uranus rotates around on its axis once every 17 hours and 24 minutes.
6. All of the planets rotate on their axes in the same direction that they move around the Sun. Except for Uranus. Uranus is tilted on its side. Its axis is almost parallel to its orbit. So Uranus rolls along like a bowling ball as it revolves around the Sun.
7. Like other gas giants, hydrogen and helium prevail in the atmosphere of Uranus. Below, beneath the gas shell is an icy mantle of ammonia ice that covers the rock core. In the upper layers, the atmosphere is composed of crystals of ammonia water and icy methane, which give the planet its pale blue color.
8. There are only two seasons in Uranus: summer and winter.
9. Uranus, with an average temperature of -197 ° C, is the coldest planet in our solar system. It is recorded that the temperature there can go down to -224 ° C. In addition to the extremely low temperature in Uranus, there are also terrible winds with a speed of more than 900 km per hour.
10. Uranus has 13 rings and according to research, they appeared after the formation of the planet. The outer ring is blue, the next red, and all the others are gray. The two outer rings were discovered only in 2003 and 2005, thanks to pictures taken from the Hubble Space Telescope.
11. There has been only one spacecraft that visited near Uranus. NASA’s Voyager 2 took 9 years and traveled 1.8 billion mi/3 billion km, gathering important information about our solar system. It flew by Uranus, spending only six hours and collected much of the data that we know about the planet. Almost everything else that we have learned about Uranus has been thanks to the Hubble Space Telescope observations.
12. Scientists discovered 27 moons around Uranus. Most of which are named after characters from the plays of William Shakespeare. The five largest moons of Uranus, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon.
