Uranus

“A human being born at one of Uranus's poles would be a middle-aged man at sunset and a very old man before it was time for a second sunrise.”

— Isaac Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong

Uranus is a gas giant with 13 rings and 27 moons that was discovered in 1781. It was the first planet to be discovered using a telescope. Uranus has a blue-green color and is made up of the compounds water, methane, and ammonia. It is tilted sideways and has seasons that can last 20 years! Even though Neptune is further away from the sun, Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system. Uranus can have extreme weather and massive storms, and is also known to have diamond rain!

Uranus has only been visited by one spacecraft: the Voyager 2. It flew by Uranus in 1986 and discovered some of Uranus’s moons and rings as well as a magnetic field stronger than that of Saturn on Uranus. The rest of the information that we know about Uranus comes from the Hubble Space Telescope and observatories on Earth.

Uranus is the only planet in our solar system that is named after a Greek god (Ouranos, god of the sky). The rest of the planets in the solar system, with the exception of Earth, are named after Roman gods. Uranus is about four times wider than Earth, and takes about 17 hours to rotate once on its axis and about 84 Earth years to orbit the Sun. The magnetic field of this already-lopsided planet is lopsided as well, and is tilted about 60° from its axis of rotation.