URANUS

Facts

• Farthest planet able to be seen without a telescope

• 1,787,000,000 miles from the sun

• Takes light 2 hours, 40 minutes to reach Earth

• Revolution = 84 years or 30,685 days

• Rotation = 17 hr 14 minutes

Facts:

• 31,763 mile diameter (4x Earth)

• Only planet named after a Greek rather than a Roman god

• Name comes from Latinized version of the Greek god of the sky- Ouranos

•Astronomer William Herschel discovered the planet in 1781

•Uranus is an “Ice Giant” color is blue-green from frozen crystals of methane in clouds

•Clouds also have layers of liquid water and ammonia ice

•Has a rocky core surrounded by layers of ice

Facts:• Axis tilt is 98o

• Hypothesized that a collision with an Earth-sized object knocked the tilt to its present position

• Second least dense planet (behind Saturn)- density = 1.27 gm/mL

Mass

• 14 ½ x greater than Earth

• 1/20 the mass of Jupiter

• 100 lbs on Earth = 90 lbs on Uranus

• Greater volume compared to its mass results in lower gravity than Earth

ATMOSPHERE

• 83 % H, 15 % He, and 2 % methane

• Temperature = -355o F in atmosphere

• 8,500o F in rocky core (compared to 42,000o F for Jupiter’s core)

• Poles receive more sunlight than equator

• Winds of about 450 mph

SATELLITES• 27 known

satellites

• All are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope

SATELLITES

• Miranda (second from Uranus above) has “ovoids”, features which resemble a racetrack with crisscrossing ridges

RINGS

• More than 10

• Range from 3 to 60 miles wide

• No more than 33 ft thick

EXPLORATION• Voyager 2 in 1985 and 1986

• Podcast on Uranus:

http://www.astronomycast.com/2007/11/episode-62-uranus/

• Short video on Uranus:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7f1nuwRq_E