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Gas Giant
Blue
Diameter:
32,000 miles
Rotation:
0.7 days
Orbit: 84
years
Temperature Average: -220 C
Moons: 27
Number
from the sun: 7
Distance
from the sun: 1783 million miles.
Uranus is the seventh
planet from the sun. You can only see Uranus if you use a telescope. Uranus was
discovered in 1781 by a man named William Herschel. At first he thought it was a
comet. He wrote to other astronomers about it, and they studied it too. Finally
they all agreed that it was the seventh planet. It was named Uranus after the
Greek god of the sky. Herschel saw two moons orbiting Uranus in 1787. Later they
found two more moons, and then a fifth moon. We also realized that Uranus is
very big. Sixty Earths could fit inside Uranus.
Uranus has a lot of
clouds over it. These clouds are made of gas. Uranus is very cold, at least –300
degrees Fahrenheit. It is cold because it is a long way from the Sun. Uranus has
rings just like Saturn does. Uranus is also tipped on its side, and spins
differently than the other planets do.
It was
hard for us to get good pictures of Uranus since it is so far away, but once we
made space probes, it got easier. Space probes have instruments that take
pictures and collect
information about things in space. They send all this information back to Earth.
In 1977 Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes were sent to study planets,
including Uranus. We learned that Uranus spins once in 17 hours. That means that
a day on Uranus is 17 hours long. We also found out that it has ten small moons.
Altogether Uranus has twenty-seven moons! We were able to study the rings around
Uranus, and saw that they are made of rocks and ice.
We still have a lot of
questions about Uranus. We don't know why it is tipped on its side. We don't
know what caused the rings to be formed. We're not sure what the planet itself
is made of because the atmosphere is very deep.
Think about it: If a day on Uranus is 17 hours long, and a day
on Earth is 24 hours long, what is the difference in the day on
Uranus and the day on Earth?
To
learn more about Uranus, visit this site:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/astronomy/planets/uranus/
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