1. The Planet Uranus
Uranus It was discovered by William Herschel on March 13, 1781 and was the first planet discovered in modern times. It is also the first planet discovered with a telescope as opposed to the naked eye.

2. Information About Uranus
Uranus is mostly made of rocks and ices, with only about 15% hydrogen and a little helium (in contrast to Jupiter and Saturn which are mostly hydrogen). Uranus (and Neptune) are in many ways similar to the cores of Jupiter and Saturn minus the massive liquid metallic hydrogen envelope. It appears that Uranus does not have a rocky core like Jupiter and Saturn but rather that its material is more or less uniformly distributed.

4. 1.
Uranus is the 7th planet from the Sun, orbiting at a distance of 2.88 billion km. But it’s still much closer than Neptune, which averages a distance of 4.5 billion km from the Sun. But there’s something strange about Uranus – it’s really cold. Unlike the other large planets in the Solar System, Uranus actually gives off less heat than it absorbs from the Sun. The other large planets have tremendously hot cores, and radiate infrared radiation. But something made the core of Uranus cool down to the point that it doesn’t radiate much heat. The temperature of the cloud tops on Uranus can dip down to 49 K (? 224 °C).

5. 2.
All of the planets in the Solar System rotate on their axis, with a tilt that’s like the Sun. For example, the axis of the Earth’s rotation is tilted 23.5-degrees away from the Sun’s plane; and Mars is similar. But the tilt of Uranus is 99-degrees. In other words, the planet is rotating on its side. All the planets look a bit like spinning top as they go around the Sun, but Uranus looks more like a round ball on its side.

6. 3.
A day on Uranus is only about 17 hours. But the tilt of Uranus works out so that one pole or the other is usually pointed towards the Sun. This means that a day at the north pole of Uranus lasts half of a Iranian year – 84 Earth years. So, if you could stand on the north pole of Uranus, you would see the Sun rise in the sky, circle around for 42 years. Then you would have 42 years of darkness.

7. 4.
The least dense planet in the Solar System is Saturn. In fact, Saturn has such a low density that it would float on water if you could find a pool large enough. Uranus comes in second as the least dense planets in the Solar System. The density of Uranus is only 1.27 g/cm3. In other words, Uranus would sink in water (water is 1 g/cm3. This low density has an interesting side effect. Even though Uranus is 14.5 times as massive as the Earth, you would only experience about 89% the force of gravity if you could stand on its surface.

8. 5.
Obviously Saturn has rings; you can see them in any backyard telescope. But Uranus has the second most dramatic set of rings in the Solar System. Unlike Saturn’s particles which are made of bright ice, the rings of Uranus are very dark. They’re also narrow, only measuring a few km wide. Astronomers think that the rings of Uranus are very young, and probably formed relatively recently, and not with the planet.

9. 6. The atmosphere of Uranus is boring… or is it?
Seen in visible light, Uranus is a boring blue ball. You can’t see the amazing bands of clouds and storms that we see on Jupiter and Saturn. But look closer in other wavelengths, like infrared and you’ll see that Uranus does have bands and cloud patterns. Early observations of Uranus didn’t show anything, but improved telescopes in the 1990s showed that Uranus has bright regions in its atmosphere. Some of these