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Our planet Uranus. Uranus is the seventh planet of our solar system. Uranus is the mysterious blue planet that circles the sun, far from the Earth. A man named William Herschel first discovered this mysterious planet in 1781, he was a German musician living in England who had a great interest in Astronomy. He believed the sky held secrets he wanted to know. He couldnt afford to buy a big telescope, so he made his own.
One night in March 1781, Herschel was studying constellations of Gemini. He spotted by accident a blue-green dot. He studied it for several nights and he realized that it was moving very slowly across the sky. Herschel believed that he found a new comet. As the word of his discovery spread, professional astronomers measured the distance to the object and decided it was too far away to be a comet. It must be a planet instead.
The new planet was twice as far from the sun as Saturn. This mysterious planet got its name from the tradition held. Like the six other planets, it was named for a god in Greek mythology. So it was named after the goddess that gives life. Because it orbited just beyond Saturn and was named Uranus for the god of the sky who furthered Saturn. Uranus is the third largest planet in our solar system.
It is huge compared to Earth. Its diameter is 31, 764 miles, which makes it about four times the size of Earth. Like all the other giant planets in out solar system, Uranus is made of a swirl of gases, liquids and solids. It has no solid surface to stand on. The solids are mostly silicon, iron, and basalt like rock.
The center of Uranus is a solid core about the size of Earth. At the outer edge of the core, are the solid elements mix with the great ocean that surrounds the rocky heart of the planet. This ocean is about 5, 000 miles deep. The deepest parts of the Earths oceans are only about seven miles deep. Scientists think Uranus ocean is mostly water mixed with a bit of liquid ammonia and methane. The thing that we thought was amazing was about Uranus oceans; they are extremely hot, as hot as 8, 000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Scientists think icy comets that got caught and absorbed by Uranus formed the ocean. The force of the comets hitting Uranus was so great it caused them to melt. The atmosphere of Uranus is made up mainly of hydrogen and helium gases, with a small amount of methane. The methane gives Uranus its green-blue color. Thats because methane absorbs most of the sunlight's colors, leaving a bluish-green light to reflect back into space. The upper atmosphere is cloudy and very active or turbulent.
Strong winds blow the blue-green gas around the planet. Near the planets equator, winds have been clocked at speeds of nearly 650 miles per hour. Around Uranus south pole the atmosphere has an odd appearance. Sunlight is reacting with chemicals there to create what looks like smog. So Uranus is basically a very cloudy atmosphere. The funny thing about Uranus is that the planet is tipped on its side.
It does not rotate creating days and nights as each side of the planet turns to and then away from the sun. Instead, it seems almost as though Uranus has fallen over onto its side. The poles are not at the top and the bottom of the planet likes Earths North and South poles but on the sides. Uranus takes 17: 25 hours to spin around completely. Scientists think that when Uranus was a young planet it was hit by a large asteroid about the size of Earth and was knocked over onto its side. Now Uranus tilts 98 degrees off center.
Uranus is so far from the sun; it takes 84 years to complete one orbit. Each of the four seasons lasts for 21 years on Uranus. The sunlight is dim and cold on Uranus. The average surface temperature is a chilly negative 350 degrees Fahrenheit; there is little difference in surface temperature between the side of the planet facing the sun and the side turning away from it. Uranus does not have an internal heat source. Little heat escapes from it because the atmosphere acts like a blanket holding the heat in the ocean.
Uranus also has rings; at least 11 thin dark rings because Uranus rotates on its side the rings have formed circles circling the planet from top to bottom. Uranus rings are made up of boulder size chunks of very dark material. The chunks are so dark that they reflect only a tint amount of sunlight that falls on them thats why they are so difficult to see from Earth. Uranus also has 15 known moons. William Shakespeare names the five previously known moons for characters in the play; they are Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda. They range from 293 to 982 miles in diameter.
The five large moons of Uranus are partly rock and partly ice. They all are cold, dark and gray in color. The moon Miranda is very strange because it appears to have been smashed into large pieces in collision with an asteroid. But instead of breaking up into several new moons, the piece was somehow glued back together. The other moons names are: Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Belinda and Puck. Mostly all of the other moons are made of icy and rocky surfaces.
Uranus is 1, 870, 800, 000 miles away from the sun. Uranus is 1, 961, 000, 000 miles away from the Earth. Uranus has the volume of 63 Earths. In other words you can fit 63 Earths in Uranus. Even if Uranus is much larger than the Earth in volume, it is made up of only 14. 5 times more material than Earth that means mass. Thats because Earths molecules are packed more tightly than Uranus.
Now technological equipment such as telescopes, computers, radio wave receivers, many kinds of cameras, and space probes assist us in getting information and learning more. A spacecraft named Voyager 2; a United States space probe designed and built by an international team of scientists to study the solar system, found out our knowledge about Uranus. It took pictures and measurements of our solar system for years, then sending back radio waves to Earth, with the Voyager, scientists computers unlocked secrets of Uranus. They also discovered many new questions.
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