Summary
- Uranus was almost named Georgium Sidus, but was instead named after the Greek god of the sky.
- Uranus is larger than commonly perceived, with a diameter of 31,763 miles.
- Many of Uranus’ moons are named after Shakespearean characters, and it is an icy giant with a tilted axis.
Uranus might be the butt of many jokes, but this icy giant has some truly fascinating characteristics. From its unusual name to its extreme tilt, here are six of the most interesting facts about the seventh planet from the Sun.
It Was Going To Have a Totally Different Name
When astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus in 1781, he originally wanted to name it Georgium Sidus (George’s Star/Planet) after King George III of England.
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As you might imagine, the global scientific community wasn’t thrilled by the idea of naming a heavenly body after a British monarch. So they named it Uranus after the Greek god of the sky, the same way Neptune and Jupiter are named after Roman gods, though I guess they could have gone with Poseidon and Zeus instead to keep things consistent.
Uranus Is Bigger Than You Think!
Uranus is huge! For some reason people seem to think of Uranus as a tiny thing in the greater scheme of the solar system, but it has a diameter of 31,763 miles according to NASA, which is four times wider than the Earth. That also makes it slightly larger than Neptune at the equator, but Neptune is more massive because if its density.
The Many Moons of Uranus Break Naming Conventions
There are a lot of moons (28!) orbiting Uranus, and those plucky British folks did finally get their way, since the moons of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare and the works of Alexander Pope. But, would a moon by any other name be as cold, rocky, and lumpy?
You Can’t Land on Uranus
Uranus is an “ice giant” (hey, isn’t that Norse mythology?) which doesn’t have the sort of surface you could actually land on. Instead, its upper layers transition into a dense, slushy mixture of water, methane, and ammonia. Uranus is classified as an “ice giant” because it has a higher proportion of icy materials like water, methane, and ammonia compared to Jupiter and Saturn. Of course, if you somehow went deep enough, you’d (maybe) find a small rocky core. No one knows for sure.
Uranus Is Extremely Tilted (or Everyone Else Is)
Unlike most planets, which have relatively modest tilts, Uranus is tipped over by 97.77 degrees, essentially rolling around the Sun on its side. From our usual Solar System perspective, Uranus is completely sideways, but hey—maybe the rest of the planets are the weird ones!
This extreme tilt results in some of the weirdest seasons in the Solar System—for about a quarter of each Uranian year one pole faces the sun, which means 21 Earth years of sunlight at one pole while the other gets only darkness. Scientists believe this odd orientation may be the result of a massive collision with a planet-sized object billions of years ago.
You Need a Telescope To See Uranus
Uranus was the first planet discovered using a telescope, and that’s not surprising because it’s so far away that you can’t discern it as a planet with your naked eye. It takes two hours and forty minutes for light from the sun to reach Uranus, compared to the eight minutes and twenty seconds it takes to reach us on Earth.
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The good news is that pretty much any half-decent telescope should reveal details of Uranus, though if you know where to look you can pick it out with a pair of binoculars. Though you might not be able to tell it’s a planet. A 4- to 6-inch telescope should reveal Uranus as a small blue-green disk, but an 8-inch or larger telescope can show more detail.
Also, yes Uranus has rings, but I don’t think that’s a super-interesting fact about it and everyone knows about them anyway, I just wanted to make sure you didn’t think I forgot.
