Uranus: The Ice Giant

Uranus, the ice giant, is the seventh planet from the sun at a distance of about 2.9 billion km away. It has hydrogen and helium upper layer like the other gas giants, Uranus also has an icy mantle which surrounds its rock and iron core. The upper crystals give Uranus its distinctive pale blue color. . Uranus has the largest tilt of any planet in our solar system and spins on its side. It 20 year long seasons because of its unusual orientation, the planet experiences extreme variations in sunlight during each 20 year long seasons. Uranus also has 13 rings that are fainted. All except two Uranian are extremely narrow – they are usually a few kilometers wide. It is believed that the rings are probably quite young. The matter within the rings …show more content…
Ammonia above a small rocky core. Uranus is the third largest planet of the Solar System, and the coldest planet in the Solar System. Uranus is visible with a naked eye and appears to be a faint star under dark sky conditions. Orbit distance is 2,870,658,186 km and Orbit period is 30,687.15 Earth days. Uranus takes 84 Earth days to orbit the Sun, its axis is at 98 degrees, this means that the north and south poles of Uranus lie near the equator of earth. During parts of its orbit one or other of the poles direct face the sun which means the planets get around 42 years of direct sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness. A conclusion may have caused the unusual tilt of Uranus. The theory is that earth-sized planet may have collided with Uranus which forced its axis to drastically shift. The wind speeds there can reach up to 900 km per hour. Uranus is about 14.5 times the mass than Earth. The Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have flown by Uranus. This happened in 1986 and it flew past the planet at a distance of around 81,500 km. This mission returned the very first close-up images of the planet, its ring system and its orbiting moons, that how we know that