Amazing Astronomy

                                             Uranus is the ancient Greek deity of the Heavens, the earliest supreme god. Uranus was the son and mate of Gaia the father of Cronus (Saturn) and of the Cyclopes and Titans (predecessors of the Olympian gods).
                                            Uranus, the first planet discovered in modern times, was discovered by William Herschel while systematically searching the sky with his telescope on March 13, 1781. It had actually been seen many times before but ignored as simply another star (the earliest recorded sighting was in 1690 when John Flamsteed cataloged it as 34 Tauri). Herschel named it "the Georgium Sidus" (the Georgian Planet) in honor of his patron, the infamous (to Americans) King George III of England; others called it "Herschel". The name "Uranus" was first proposed by Bode in conformity with the other planetary names from classical mythology but didn't come into common use until 1850.

                                     Uranus is blue-green in color, the result of methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere. The planet is often dubbed an ice giant, since 80 percent or more of its mass is made up of a fluid mix of water, methane, and ammonia ices.Unlike the other planets of the solar system, Uranus is tilted so far that it essentially orbits the sun on its side, with the axis of its spin nearly pointing at the star. This unusual orientation might be due to a collision with a planet-sized body soon after it was formed.
This unusual tilt gives rise to extreme seasons roughly 20 years long, meaning that for nearly a quarter of the Uranian year, equal to 84 Earth years, the sun shines directly over each pole, leaving the other half of the planet to experience a long, dark, cold winter.
                                   A planet's magnetic poles are typically lined up with the poles along which it rotates, but Uranus' magnetic field is tilted, with its magnetic axis tipped over nearly 60 degrees from the planet's axis of rotation. This leads to a strangely lopsided magnetic field for Uranus, with the strength of the field at the northern hemisphere's surface being up to more than 10 times that of the strength at the southern hemisphere's surface.

 Uranus's Moons :
                                       
                                 Uranus has 27 known moons. Instead of being named after figures from Greek or Roman mythology, its first four moons were named after magical spirits in English literature, such as William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock." Since then, astronomers have continued this tradition, drawing names for the moons from the works of Shakespeare or Pope.Oberon and Titania are the largest Uranian moons, and were the first to be discovered, by William Herschel in 1787. William Lassell, who was the first to see a moon orbiting Neptune, discovered the next two, Ariel and Umbriel. Nearly a century then passed before Miranda was found in 1948.
                                 Then Voyager 2 visited the Uranian system in 1986 and found an additional 10, all just 16 to 96 miles (26-154 kilometers) in diameter — Juliet, Puck, Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Desdemona, Portia, Rosalind, Cressida and Belinda — and each roughly made half of water ice and half of rock. Since then, astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories have raised the total to 27 known moons, and spotting these was tricky — they are as little as 8 to 10 miles (12 to 16 km) across, blacker than asphalt, and nearly 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) away.
                                 Between Cordelia, Ophelia and Miranda is a swarm of eight small satellites crowded together so tightly that astronomers don't yet understand how the little moons have managed to avoid crashing into each other. Scientists suspect there might still be more moons, closer to Uranus than any known.


 The Rings of Uranus : 
    
                                  The rings of Uranus were the first to be seen after Saturn's. They were a significant discovery, since it helped astronomers understand that rings are a common feature of planets, not merely a peculiarity of Saturn.Uranus possesses two sets of rings. The inner system of rings consists mostly of narrow, dark rings, while an outer system of two more-distant rings, discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope, are brightly colored, one red, one blue. Scientists have now identified 13 known rings around Uranus.








Atmospheric Composition  :
               82.5 percent hydrogen, 15.2 percent helium, 2.3 percent methane.

Research & Exploration : 
                                In 1986, NASA's Voyager 2 interplanetary probe encountered Uranus. This flyby remains the only investigation of the planet carried out from a short distance, and no other visits are currently planned. Launched in 1977, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to Uranus on January 24, 1986, coming within 81,500 kilometers of the planet's cloudtops, before continuing its journey to Neptune. Voyager 2 studied the structure and chemical composition of Uranus's atmosphere including the planet's unique weather, caused by its axial tilt of 97.77°. It made the first detailed investigations of its five largest moons, and discovered 10 new moons. It examined all nine of the system's known rings and discovered two new ones . It also studied the magnetic field, its irregular structure, its tilt and its unique corkscrew magnetotail caused by Uranus's sideways orientation