Uranus

By Ellie, Robin and Justin

Atmosphere

Uranus is one of the giant gas planets. Its atmosphere is 11 000-Km thick and it is made of hydrogen and helium.

Uranus’s atmosphere does not have any distinguishing features, because of a high level of chemicals around the upper and lower parts of the atmosphere, so it makes the features hard to see.

Uranus is the color blue. It is blue because of the methane gas that circles it. The methane gas absorbs red and orange light, leaving a bluish color.

There are clouds around the atmosphere of Uranus, they are thought to be made of mostly methane and ice. The cloud temperature is 221 degrees Celsius.

Inner Core:

When Voyager 2 (a space robot) was sent up into space it found out that Uranus’s inner core is made of molten rock and it is 13 000 km across, which is about the size of Earth.

The next layer towards the outside is made of liquid. The liquid is made up of mostly water. It is 8000 km deep.

Evidence of Life

There has been no sign of evidence of life on Uranus, yet. It is very unlikely that astronomers will ever find out if there has been life on Uranus. This is because its atmosphere is made of gas so you would fall through until you got to the inner core. Then you would be stuck, sitting on a ball of molten rock.

Name Origin

When William Herschel discovered Uranus he wanted to name it "Georgium Sidus", which is a Latin name and means George’s star, after George the third, The British King.

Other astronomers wanted to call it "Herschel" after William Herschel, the founder of the planet." Another group of astronomers wanted to call it a mythical name. They Wanted to name it "Uranus", because Jupiter is Mar’s father (in myths), Saturn is Jupiter’s father so they wanted to call this new planet "Uranus" who is Saturn’s father.

Neat Facts

Uranus axis is 98 degrees

One of Uranus’s moons, Miranda, is the most interesting moon, because it looks like it has been broken apart and then glued back together.

Some of Miranda’s cliffs are higher than the Grand Canyons.

The clouds on Uranus show little sign of activity, unlike Jupiter and Saturn.

Voyager 2 took the best pictures of Uranus in 1986.

Uranus is known as the "tilted planet and as one of the five "gas planets".

Uranus’s rings and moons are very dark.

The Earth’s moon is larger than Uranus’s largest moon.

From Earth Uranus’s moons look like they are orbiting around Uranus up and down, instead of side to side.

Uranus’s moons are tilted just like Uranus is.

Uranus’s darkest moon, Umbriel, has a small white circle on and astronomers think that it is a bright crater.

The same man that discovered Uranus discovered two of its moons in 1787.

Uranus was the first planet to be discovered in modern times.

Uranus was actually seen in 1690, 91 years before it was discovered.

John Flamsteed thought it was a star because it was very dim and far away. If he would have looked back at it at another time he would have noticed that it was orbiting the sun and that is was a planet and not a star.

Revolution

Uranus is the third largest planet and the seventh closest to the sun.

It is one of the most unusual planets and it takes it 84 years to revolve around the sun. In total, Uranus has 42 years of daytime and 42 years of night in one revolution.

Uranus’s orbit is not completely circular, so sometimes it is farther away from the sun than Pluto.

Rings

When Voyager two went up into space, it took pictures of Uranus’s rings. It sent the pictures back to Earth, and so far they have discovered eleven rings.

It has always been a mystery why Uranus’s rings are so dark, but astronomers think that when the rings were first formed they were made of ice and rock. Astronomers believe that the ice evaporated and left the rock all by it’s self, and that is why it is such a dark color.

The rings were discovered in 1977. They were discovered when astronomers were looking at a star beside Uranus, but the star was being blocked out before Uranus had moved in front of it. They then began to believe that Uranus must have rings around it.

Saturn also has rings around it. The difference between Uranus’s rings from Saturn’s rings is that Saturn’s are think and bright and Uranus’s are thin and dark.

Although Uranus’s rings are dark, most of the time they are too faint to see through a telescope from Earth. At times, from Earth Uranus and it’s rings look like a bull’s eye.

Satellites

Name	Distance from Uranus (km)	Diameter of Satellite (km)	Year of Discovery
Ariel	190 900	1 160	1851
Belinda	75 300	60	1986
Bianca	59 200	50	1986
Cordelia	49 800	40	1986
Cressida	61 800	60	1986
Desdemona	62 700	60	1986
Juliet	64 400	80	1986
Miranda	129 900	570	1948
Oberon	583 400	1 525	1787
Ophelia	53 800	50	1986
Portia	66 100	80	1986
Puck	86	170	1985
Rosalind	69 900	60	1986
Titania	436 300	1 580	1787
Umbriel	266 000	1 170	1851