Uranus+-+A+Planet+on+its+Side

Uranus: A Planet on its Side The Basics: Uranus is the 7th planet from the sun. It has a unique bluish-green color and a thick, gaseous atmosphere. Uranus has 27 moons, the largest being Titania. Uranus is 1,784,860,000 miles away from the sun. It takes light almost 3 hours to make it all the way to the planet. Being so far away from the sun, in the time it takes Uranus to revolve around the sun once, Earth would have made 84 full revelations.



Discovery: The planet was discovered in 1690 by John Flamsteed, but then it wasn't a planet. It was believed to be a star, and labeled so until 1781. William Herschel observed that it was actually a planet. It was the first planet discovered since ancient times. Many of the planets are named from greek mythology. Uranus is a prefect example. When it was first known as a planet, it was called Herschel in honor of it's discoverer, but was changed to Uranus, a greek sky god, to keep the greek/roman mythology names in tradition. Herschel was not the only one to discover things about Uranus. Infact, U.S. space probe, Voyager 2, made many, very important discoveries about Uranus. It discovered many of it's moons and ring system. It even flew 50,000 miles into thick atmosphere to find it's surface. This just goes to prove that even after it's original discovery there can be many more things still left undiscovered. Launch of Voyager 2 Voyager 2 Spacecraft