Uranus is the farthest planet in the solar system

O n the night of 13 March 1781, William Herschel was peering through his telescope in his back garden in New King Street, Bath, when he noticed an unusual faint object near the star Zeta Tauri. He observed it for several nights and noted that it was moving slowly against background stars. The astronomer first thought he had found a comet but later identified it, correctly, as a distant planet. Subsequently named Studies have since shown Uranus to be a very odd world. While the rest of the planets in our solar system spin like tops, Uranus lies on its side. And although it is not the farthest planet from the sun, it is the solar system’s coldest. Uranus also endures seasons of extraordinary magnitude. Each pole spends decades bathed in non-stop sunlight, before experiencing decades of total darkness. A human being who was born at sunset near the pole disappearing into autumn darkness, would have to wait 42 years to see their first spring sunrise. For good measure, Uranus is the only planet to be named after a Greek rather than a Roman god. (Uranus was the grandfather of Zeus.) Despite these astronomical oddities and extremes, surprisingly little effort has been made to get up close to Uranus. Only one robot probe has ever visited it – in 1986 – when the US Voyager 2 craft swept past on its grand tour of the solar system. It revealed a massive, featureless, pale blue world with an atmosphere of hydrogen, helium and methane, a rich family of moons and a powerful magnetic fiel...

The seventh planet from the Sun, It is a blue-green "gas giant" with more than 60 times the volume and about 15 times the mass of Earth. Because of its lower density than Earth, it has an atmosphere with a top gravity that is 11% weaker. The planet has around a 31,800-mile equatorial diameter (51,100 km). Around Uranus, there are two sets of rings. A set of inner rings consisting mostly of narrow, dark bands, and two more-distant rings, discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope, which includesa reddish inner ring and a blue outer ring. But, that is just the elevator pitch on this planet. Lets dig a little deeper, shall we? What is the most interesting fact about Uranus? Source: A very chilly and windy planet, the ice giant rotates at a nearly 90-degree inclination from the plane of its orbit and is encircled by 11 hazy rings and 27 known moons. Uranus appears to spin on its side and orbit the Sun like a rolling ball due to this peculiar tilt. Astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, although at first, he believed it to be either a comet or a star, making it the first planet to be spotted with the use of a telescope. Two years later, in part as a result of observations by astronomer Johann Elert Bode, the object was unanimously acknowledged as a new planet. Herschel made an unsuccessful attempt to give his find the name Georgium Sidus in honor of King George III. Instead, Bode's recommendation to name it after the Greek god of the sky, Uranus, was approved by t...

It takes Uranus 84 years to orbit the sun and 17 hours to rotate about its axis. Uranus is also the coldest planet in the solar system, having a minimum temperature of minus 371 degrees Fahrenheit ( minus 224 degrees Celsius). Most of the planets in the solar system are visible to the naked eye. No equipment is required to see the first six planets in our solar system. Thus, the planet Uranus was unknown to ancient cultures, having been discovered in the 1700s. On March 13, 1781, the astronomer William Herschel became the first person to recognize Uranus as another planet in our solar system. For the first time in human history, the number of known planets in the solar system increased. Despite being discovered over 240 years ago, virtually everything about Uranus was a mystery. Two main factors make Uranus a challenging world to observe and study in detail: Uranus's distance and dimness. Uranus orbits the sun at an average distance of 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers), and so it receives very little sunlight compared to the other planets. So not only is Uranus exceptionally far away, but it is also very dim and hard to see without a powerful telescope. Most of what is known about Uranus comes from the Voyager 2 flyby of Uranus in 1986, which not only offered scientists with the first up-close images of Uranus, but also revealed the planet's composition, density, and moons. Observational History Of Uranus An Image of Uranus Captured by Voyager 2 in 1986, NASA The ...

Artist’s impression of the planets in our solar system, along with the Sun (at bottom). Credit: NASA The eight planets in our solar system each occupy their own orbits around the Sun. They orbit the star in ellipses, which means their distance to the sun varies depending on where they are in their orbits. When they get closest to the Sun, it's called perihelion, and when it's farthest away, it's called aphelion. So to talk about how far the planets are from the The table below (first created by Universe Today founder Fraser Cain in 2008) shows all the planets and their distance to the Sun, as well as how close these Mercury • Closest: 46 million km / 29 million miles (.307 AU) • Furthest: 70 million km / 43 million miles (.466 AU) • Average: 57 million km / 35 million miles (.387 AU) • Closest to Mercury from Earth: 77.3 million km / 48 million miles Venus • Closest: 107 million km / 66 million miles (.718 AU) • Furthest: 109 million km / 68 million miles (.728 AU) • Average: 108 million km / 67 million miles (.722 AU) • Closest to Venus from Earth: 40 million km / 25 million miles Earth • Closest: 147 million km / 91 million miles (.98 AU) • Furthest: 152 million km / 94 million miles (1.1 AU) • Average: 150 million km / 93 million miles (1 AU) Mars From the Solar Dynamics Observatory: Planet Venus transiting the Sun in the 304 Anstrom wavelength at approx. 90,000 degrees Fahrenheit in July 2012. Credit: NASA/SDO • Closest: 205 million km / 127 million miles (1.38 AU) • F...

Activity : 50 mins Activity : 50 mins Planetary Size and Distance Comparison Planetary Size and Distance Comparison Students use metric measurement, including astronomical units (AU), to investigate the relative size and distance of the planets in our solar system. Then they use scale to model relative distance. 1. Review planet order and relative sizes in our Display the NASA illustration: All Planet Sizes. Ask students to point out the location of Earth. Then challenge them to identify all of the planets, outward from the sun (left to right): inner planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars; outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. Remind students that Pluto is no longer considered a What do you think relative size means? Elicit from students that the pictures show how big the planets are when compared to each other and to the sun. Ask: Which planet is the smallest? (Mercury) Which is the largest? (Jupiter) 2. Have students gather data and compare planet sizes. Divide students into small groups. Distribute one copy of the worksheet Planetary Size Comparison to each group. Have groups use the Planet Size Comparison interactive to find and record data on planet diameters and ratios. Ask: • What do you notice about the size of the planets? (Possible response: The inner, rocky planets are smaller than the outer, gaseous planets.) • How do you think the sizes of the planets compare? (Possible response: There is a big difference in the sizes of the planets. Some are...

The short answer is that Neptune has the coldest overall average temperature and Uranus has the coldest temperature recorded. The long answer is that once upon a time the answer to this question was simple. Pluto was the planet furthest away from the Sun and also the coldest. However, Pluto was declassified as a planet in 2006 and is now known as a dwarf planet. So, what is the coldest planet in our Solar System now? It sounds like a simple question, but actually, there are two planets in the running for this title. It all depends on whether we are talking about the average temperature of the planet or the lowest temperature the planet reaches. Neptune Most would say the coldest planet in our solar system is the frosty Neptune. This is because it is the eighth planet in our solar system and therefore the furthest away from the Sun. The Sun is our primary heat source so it would make sense that the planet with the greatest distance from it would be the coldest. Neptune is known as an Ice Giant and for a good reason. It has an average temperature of around -214 degrees Celsius. That is much chillier than Earth’s average of 15 degrees Celsius. Neptune lacks a solid surface as such and instead has an icy water layer that serves as the planet’s mantle. This makes finding a surface temperature difficult, but research conducted from Earth and fly by missions have managed to take this average temperature from the upper atmosphere. Uranus Curiously though, Neptune only holds the ti...