64 Interesting Facts About Uranus

By
Editorial Staff

Last updated on February 2nd, 2024

48. Uranus is also dubbed as the most boring planet in the solar system because of its quiet nature and lack of interesting data that can be gathered with telescopes.

49. Uranus is associated with the day “Wednesday.”

50. It is also the ruling sign of Zodiac “Aquarius.” 

51. Modern astrologers consider Uranus as the primary native ruler of the eleventh house. The planet is thought to be associated with mental disorders, sympathetic nervous system, breakdowns and hysteria, spasms, and cramps.

About Uranus’ moons

52. The five largest satellites of Uranus are: Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda. They were discovered between 1787 and 1948, and have a diameter between 1100 and 1600 kilometres (680 to 1000 miles).

53. Besides the five larger moons, Titania, Oberon, Umbriel, Ariel, and Miranda, which are at least 1100 kilometres (680 miles) wide, Uranus has another 22 smaller moons between 12 and 154 km (8 to 96 miles) in diameter. These smaller moons were discovered by the Voyager 2 mission in 1986 and the Hubble Space Telescope.

54. Miranda is the innermost and the smallest of Uranus’ five larger moons. It was discovered in 1948. Its surface is covered by a variety of geological structures, i.e. valleys, craters, cliffs, and canyons over 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon.

55. Ariel is one of the five larger moons of Uranus. Its surface has signs of extreme erosion. It has very few large craters, many small ones, and intersecting valleys.

56. Umbriel is the darkest of the five larger moons of Uranus. On its surface it has a characteristic bright ring, which is a crater called Wunda, located almost on the equator.

57. Oberon is the outermost of the five larger moons of Uranus. Its surface is heavily cratered, and some of the craters have very dark floors. Oberon’s name comes from the King of Fairies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream of William Shakespeare.

58. The inner nine moons of Uranus, i.e. Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Belinda, and Perdita, constitute the most tightly packed system of moons in the Solar System. Their orbits are unstable and chaotic, which means it is possible that they will eventually collide with each other.

59. A space shuttle wouldn’t have a place to land safely on Uranus. Being an ice giant, it does not have a proper surface but just a mass of swirling ice, and the pressure and temperature would be so high travelling through the atmosphere, that it would be destroyed.

60. The winds in the equator of Uranus are retrograde (they blow in the reverse direction of the planet’s rotation), while the winds closer to the poles blow in a prograde direction (following the planet’s rotation).

61. Uranus’ magnetosphere (the region affected by the planet’s magnetic field) is irregularly shaped. Unlike other planets, the magnetosphere’s axis is tilted with respect of the planet’s axis of rotation, and it is also offset from the centre of the planet.

62. Uranus has aurorae as well as Earth, Jupiter, and Saturn, but due to the irregular shape of its magnetosphere, they are not located on the poles.

63. Uranus aided the discovery of Neptune. In 1821, by using Newton’s Law of Gravitation, astronomers could predict Uranus’ path around the Sun. When the observations were made, however, the planet was never where it was supposed to be. Scientist thought that this was due to the presence of a gravitational perturbation caused by an undiscovered planet, and using complex formulae they calculated the mass and distance of this planet from the Sun and Uranus. This prediction was confirmed in 1846 when Neptune was observed for the first time.

64. There is no possibility of life on Uranus. The temperature and pressure are too extreme for life to survive.

The most detailed picture of Uranus and its rings was taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, and it was released by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) in 2023. There are a number of missions proposed by NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ESA (European Space Agency), and CNSA (China National Space Administration) to reach Uranus. They include orbiters (spacecrafts designed to orbit the planet but not land on it) that would release atmospheric probes, and flyby probes. None of these projects have a definite launch date.

Quick facts about Uranus

Discovered byWilliam Herschel on March 13th 1781
Position from the SunSeventh (7th)
Mass8.68 x 1025 kg
Diameter31,763 miles or 51117.593 km
Orbit84 Earth years
Time to rotate17 hours, 54 minutes
Moons27
First recorded by a satelliteVoyager 2 on January 25th, 1986.
Principal/characteristic colorPale blue
Gases presentHydrogen - 83%, Helium - 15% and Methane - 2%.
Average distance from Sun19.19 AU (2,870,972,200 km)
Mean temperature (K)59
Rings13
Mean density (gm/cm^3)1.29
Atmospheric pressure (bars)1.2
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