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Uranus

Uranus

Uranus distance to the Sun is 19 times that of the Earth.

Uranus is a planet not known in ancient times. The planet was discovered by the English astronomer William Herschel with a telescope, in 1781.

The spacecraft Voyager 2 is the first man made craft to fly past Uranus in 1986.

Today, weather phenomena can be observed in the atmosphere of Uranus using the largest telescopes on Earth.

Uranus uses 84 Earth years to orbit the Sun and has only completed approximately four orbits around the Sun since its discovery.

The moons of Uranus are one weird pack!

Miranda

The surface of Miranda has a mix of very different types of surface structures – as if it could not decide what to look like!

 

 

 

Ariel

Moon Ariel has a surface that looks like a frozen ocean with large icebergs locked into it – somewhat like the Jupiter moon, Europa.

 

 

 

Oberon

The naming of Titania and Oberon is a breach of tradition in naming moons after figures from Greek mythology as the discoverer, William Hershel, instead used characters from the works of the English writers William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. This new tradition of naming moons has been continued when discovering additional of moons of Uranus.

 

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