Solar System's outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all gas giants. Jupiter and Saturn are composed mainly of molecular hydrogen, metallic hydrogen and helium. While Uranus and Neptune, the ice giants, are made up of water, ammonia and methane ices on their mantle, and hydrogen, helium and methane gases on the surface. Hence, their beautiful baby blue and ultramarine colors.

The sad apart about these gas giants is that landing with a spaceship on them isn't possible because they don't have any surface. And as one goes closer to their cores gaseous atmospheres become thicker and denser. The difference between a rocky planet and a gas giant is that unlike the former, the latter's atmosphere is also indistinguishable with its mantle. So extraterrestrial creatures from Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and other gas giants in the Universe are quite unthinkable.

Gas Giants

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The surface of Uranus is one of the most fascinating things that one can study. It’s so unique that its atmosphere is actually its surface. The giant gaseous planet has no solid surface and what scientist and astronomers have learned is that the surface is composed of fluids. The whole make up of Uranus being a giant planet is its gases. Yes it is big but not as massive as its other contemporary giant planets such as Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. Uranus is actually a massive heavenly body made up of ice and gas. Its center which is icy will freeze objects that pass through its atmosphere before reaching the surface.

Like other gaseous planets, Uranus is made up of gases such as hydrogen, methane and helium. There is a large amount of methane on Uranus, the gas plays a great role in giving the planet its color because methane only absorbs certain colors from the light it gets from the Sun and the others are reflected back into space thus giving it the bluish green color. Also, with its make up consisting mostly of gas, the planet is also blasted with winds up to 900 km/h which is almost 4 times the wind of the strongest hurricane known on Earth.

1986 Pictures of the Surface of Uranus

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Uranus

Uranus has 5 major moons:

Titania – named after the queen of the fairies in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. It was discovered in 1787 by William Herschel. Titania is composed of rock and ice and its surface is dark and mildly red. It is the largest of the moons of Uranus with an estimated 1600 km diameter.

Oberon – Second only to Titania in mass and size. It is also named after a character in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”- the king of fairies. It was discovered in the same year as Titania William Herschel. It has an equatorial radius of 761.4 km.

Umbriel – It was discovered by William Lassell on October 24, 1851. It was named after a character in “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope. Umbriel is mostly made of ice with few portions of rock. It has a mean radius of 584.7 km.

Ariel – The brightest of the moons of Uranus. Aside from craters, canyons are all over Ariel’s surface much like Mars. It was discovered along Umbriel in 1851 by William Lassell. Ariel is the name of a character in “The Tempest” (Shakespeare) and “The Rape of the Lock” (Pope). It has a 472 km diameter.

Miranda – It has a diameter of 470 km. Among the moons in the solar system, Miranda has a very unique feature. Its surface seems like it has been put together in a random fashion. Astronomers believe that Miranda has shattered numerous times before and has been reassembled. However, there is no conclusive proof for this theory.

The minor moons of Uranus are:
Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Mab, Belinda, Perdita, Puck, Cupid, Francisco, Caliban, Stephano, Trinculo, Sycorax, Margaret, Prospero, Setebos, Ferdinand

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It was the British astronomer Frederick William Herschel who discovered Uranus in 1781. However, before that, John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, saw the planet and cataloged it as a constellation (specifically 34 Tauri). A few decades before the actual discovery, Pierre Lemonnier of France saw the planet at least twelve times.

In March 1781, Herschel saw the planet and thought it was a comet or a fixes star. He presented his observations to the Royal Society, asserting that he found a comet. His assertion became with the implication that the comet was very much like a planet. He then told Nevil Maskelyne, then the Astronomer Royal, about his discovery and was told that the comet could actually be a regular planet due to the absence of a tail and its strange movement. Still, while numerous astronomers already suspected that the comet may be a planet, it took Herschel two more years to accept that the comet he discovered is a primary planet. Uranus is the first planet to be discovered outside the five classical planets.

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Uranus

On March 13, 1781, William Herschel was able to observe the planet while he was at the garden of their house located at a town known as Bath, Somerset in England, which is at present referred to as Herschel Museum of Astronomy. On April 26, 1781, he made an initial report regarding his observation stating it was a comet. Upon presenting his discovery regarding what he observed to what is known as the Royal Society, he continuously made assertions about finding a comet while comparing what he discovered implicitly to a planet.

While Herschel continued to make descriptions of his new object of interest as a comet, some astronomers started to suspect that it was not a comet at all. It was Anders Johan Lexell, a Russian astronomer, who made the first computation regarding the orbit of the newly discovered object. The almost circular orbit made this astronomer draw the conclusion that it was indeed a planet and not a comet. Sooner, with tireless researches and observations of the object, it was finally accepted as a new universal planet. It was on 1783 that Herschel himself made an acknowledgment to Joseph Banks, the president of Royal Society, to the fact that what he initially mistook as a comet was indeed a primary planet present in our solar system. Later on, the planet was named Uranus.

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It was in 1977 that astronomers confirmed the existence of Uranus rings through the discovery of Edward Dunham, James Elliot and Douglas Mink. After more than a decade, two more rings were discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. In 2003 and 2005, two more rings were observed by the Hubble Space Telescope. To date, there are 13 rings to Uranus.

Unlike other ring systems that were given proper names, Greek letters were primarily used to name the rings of Uranus, particularly the main rings.

1. ε ring (epsilon) – Is the brightest and the densest of the 13 rings of Uranus. It is also highly reflective, responsible for more than half of the reflect light by Uranus’s rings. The exact thickness of the ε ring is unknown, but astronomers estimate it to be around 150 meters.
2. δ ring (delta) – Has an optically thin but dense component and a geometrically broad component with low optical depth. It was proven in 2007 when the ring exhibited increased brightness that can only happen under those conditions.
3. γ ring (gamma) – It is a narrow ring with a width of about 4 kilometers only. In 2007, the γ ring was not seen during a plane-crossing event, which led to the conclusion that it is geometrically thin but it is optically dense.
4. η ring (eta) – Has components that resemble the delta ring. It was evident during the plane-crossing event in 2007 when the η ring became the 2nd brightest ring.
5. α and β rings (alpha and beta) – These two rings are second only to the ε ring in terms of brightness. These two rings disappeared in 2007 indicating the lack of dust and properties resembling the γ ring.
6. Rings 6, 5 and 4 – Are the narrowest and darkest of the Uranus rings. Due to this property, these rings were not visible during 2007.

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Uranus

The planet Uranus is composed of features that are actually similar to that of Neptune and these two planets differ in composition from those of planets Jupiter and Saturn, which are considered as the larger gas giants. Neptune is basically composed of helium and hydrogen and contains high proportions of ice such as ammonia, methane and water in combination with other traces of hydrocarbons. It is considered to have the coldest atmosphere in our solar system having a temperature of at least 49k or -224 degrees celsius. Its cloud structure is complex and layered, having water to fill up the lowest clouds and methane for the uppermost cloud layer. The planet Uranus’ interior has ices and rocks for its primary composition.

Just similar to the other planets that are considered as giant, Uranus consists of a ring system, a number of moons and magnetosphere. Its configuration is unique from among the other planets because the rotation of its axis is tilted sideways near its plane of revolution in the sun. When viewed from the planet Earth, the rings of Uranus may sometimes appear to be circling the planet just like the target of an archery and the moons may be revolving around it just like a clock’s hands.

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Uranus’ atmosphere

The troposphere is the lowest and most dense part of the Uranus’s atmosphere. As the altitude increases the temperature decreases. The troposphere contains many different and complex cloud structures. The clouds that appear in the troposphere depend on the pressure of each location. Clouds made up of water are said to be located at pressures ranging from 50-100 bar. Clouds made up of ammonium hydrosulfide are located in pressures that range from 20-40 bars.

Hydrogen sulfide and ammonia clouds are located at pressures between 3-10 bars. Located at pressures ranging from 1-2 is a very thin layer of methane clouds. Changes in seasons, strong winds, convections and bright clouds are typical occurrences in the troposphere.

The stratosphere is the middle part of the atmosphere. Haze layers made up of acetylene and ethane form in the low part of the stratosphere and tropopause. This may be part of the reason why Uranus has such a bland color.

The thermosphere/corona makes up the outermost layer of the atmosphere. Helium is absent in this part of the atmosphere. The thermosphere has an abundant amount of molecular hydrogen as well as hydrogen atoms. Because these molecules mass together coupled with the high temperature of this region explains why this part of the atmosphere is so large. The thermosphere is around 50,000 km away from the planet itself. This quality is unique to Uranus. Because of this small particles which orbit Uranus are dragged to the atmosphere which lessens the dust on the rings of Uranus.

Rings of Uranus

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Uranus

Back in 1783, Uranus’ orbital elements were first calculated by Pierre-Simon Laplace. Discrepancies were soon discovered over time and in 1841, John Couch Adams stated that these differences could be due to the gravitation tug from an unseen planet. Urban Le Verrier began his independent research into the Uranus’ orbit in 1845. It wasn’t until 1846 that Johann Gottfried Galle found this formerly unseen planet which was named Neptune.

The rotational period of Uranus’ is 17 hours and 14 minutes (compared to Earth time, a day on Uranus is approximately 17 hours and 14 minutes). However, just like on the other giant planets, it also experiences relatively strong winds going in the direction of its rotation. In some latitudes, such as the region, which is two-thirds from the equator to South Pole, there are features of the atmosphere that are visibly faster in terms of movement thus making full rotation within 14 hours. The planet’s axis of rotation located on its side on the plane of the Solar System and has an axial tilt of 97.77 degrees.

This axial tilt would give the planet seasonal changes that are very different from those of the other planets. When the Uranus solstice draw near, one pole would continuously face the sun whilst the other would face the other way. Only a strip of area around the equator would go through a rapid day-night cycle and the sun would be very low on the horizon, much like what the Earth’s Polar Regions go through.

Voyager Mission – Outer Planet: Uranus in F Minor

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The average temperature of the surface of Uranus is 49° Kelvin or -224° Celsius. What makes the planet so cold is that it has a low internal temperature. At its core, Uranus is only 5000° K, compared to Jupiter, which as a core temperature of 30000° K. The reason for Uranus’s lack of internal warmth is unclear, although scientists speculate that it is related to its unusual axial tilt that is completely unlike the other planets of the Solar System; the planet rotates at an angle of 99 degrees. Uranus may also have experienced a massive collision early in its history, which could also have allowed it to release much of its internal warmth.

Although it was previously believed that Uranus was climactically a bland planet, recent observations from the Hubble Space Telescope have shown that the planet actually has dynamic weather patterns. Uranus is swept by huge wind storms, with wind speeds reaching as much as 900 km/hr although it receives much less energy from the Sun than Earth. One storm, dubbed the Great Dark Spot, is as large as the diameter of Earth or approximately 13,000 km long.

Exploring Uranus

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