![]() ![]() And that's not the only strange thing about its spin. Thanks to its sideways turn, Uranus has some wild seasons, with the sun blazing across each pole for 21 Earth-years at a time while the opposing side lingers in the pitch blackness of space. Scientists believe that this unexpected tilt is the result of a massive collision with something the size of Earth far in the planet's past. The gas giant is tipped on its side, spinning on its axis at nearly a right angle to its orbital path around the sun, which requires a lengthy 84 Earth-years to complete. One particularly curious feature of Uranus is its off-kilter positioning. While Saturn wears the crown for the least dense planet in our celestial family, Uranus is not far behind: Most of its mass is made up of an icy dense fluid of water, ammonia, and methane. Trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide also hint that, if you could visit this distant place without a spacesuit, the planet would smell like rotten eggs. The rest of planet's atmosphere is largely made of hydrogen and helium, with scant amounts of ammonia, water, and methane. Uranus owes its vibrant blue-green hues not from unusual oceans but from an upper atmosphere flush with methane, which absorbs the sun's red light and scatters blue light back to our eyes. ![]() Like Saturn, Jupiter, and Neptune, Uranus is a big ball of gas, often called a jovian or gas giant world. But it is actually the third-largest planet in our solar system, and is roughly four times wider than Earth. The planet Uranus was so hard to find in part because it is a whopping 1.8 billion miles away. Instead, it got its official name from the Greek god of the sky, Uranus, who was both son and husband to Gaea, the goddess of Earth. When it was accepted as a planet years later, Herschel lobbied to call the discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III. In March 1781 British astronomer Sir William Herschel spotted the glinting object in the sky, initially mistaking it for a comet. Uranus was the first of three planets in our solar system discovered thanks to the invention of the telescope. But there's a lot to love about the icy giant, from its 13 rings to its 27 known moons to the fact that it may even rain diamonds from its hazy atmosphere. Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, may initially look like a bland, blue-green ball. ![]()
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