Once considered one of the blander-looking planets, Uranus has been
revealed as a dynamic world with some of the brightest clouds in the
outer solar system and 11 rings. The first planet found
with the aid of a telescope, Uranus was discovered in 1781 by
astronomer William Herschel. The seventh planet from the sun is so
distant that it takes 84 years to complete one orbit.
Uranus, with no solid surface, is one of the gas giant
planets. (The others are Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune.) Its atmosphere
is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of
methane and traces of water and ammonia. Uranus gets its blue-green
color from methane gas. Sunlight is reflected from Uranus's cloud tops,
which lie beneath a layer of methane gas. As the reflected sunlight
passes back through this layer, the methane gas absorbs the red portion
of the light, allowing the blue portion to pass through and resulting in
the blue-green color that we see.
The planet's atmospheric
details are very difficult to see in visible light. The bulk (80 percent
or more) of the mass of Uranus is contained in an extended liquid core
consisting primarily of "icy" materials (water, methane, and ammonia),
with higher-density material at depth.
Off-Kilter Planet
Uranus's rotation axis
is nearly horizontal, as though the planet has been knocked on its
side. This unusual orientation may be the result of a collision with a
planet-size body early in Uranus's history, which apparently radically
changed the planet's rotation. Additionally, while magnetic fields are
typically in alignment with a planet's rotation, Uranus's magnetic field is tipped over.
Even
though Uranus is tipped on its side and experiences seasons that last
over 20 years, the temperature differences on the summer and winter
sides do not differ greatly because the planet is so far from the sun.
Near the cloud tops, the temperature of Uranus is -357 degrees
Fahrenheit (-216 degrees Celsius).
Because of the planet's unusual
orientation, Uranus's rings are perpendicular to its orbital path about
the sun. The ten outer rings are dark, thin, and narrow, while the 11th
ring is inside the others and is broad and diffuse.
Uranus has 27 known moons,
named mostly for characters from the works of William Shakespeare and
Alexander Pope. Miranda is the strangest-looking Uranian moon, appearing
as though it were made of spare parts. The high cliffs and winding
valleys of the moon may indicate partial melting of the interior, with
icy material occasionally drifting to the surface.
Source: http://science.nationalgeographic.com/science/space/solar-system/uranus-article/
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