Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun and the third largest planet in the solar system.

Although Uranus is visible to the naked eye, it was long mistaken as a star because of the planet's dimness and slow orbit. The planet is also notable for its dramatic tilt, which causes its axis to point nearly directly at the sun.

British astronomer William Herschel discovered Uranus on March 13, 1781, with his telescope while surveying all stars down to those about 10 times dimmer than can be seen by the naked eye. One star seemed different, and within a year Herschel realized the star followed a planetary orbit.

Uranus (as it was called commonly after 1850 or so) was named after the Greek sky deity Ouranos, the earliest of the lords of the heavens. It is the only planet to be named after a Greek god rather than a Roman one. Before the name was settled on, many names had been proposed for the new planet, including Hypercronius ("above Saturn"), Minerva (the Roman goddess of wisdom) and Herschel, after its discoverer. To flatter King George III of England, Herschel proposed the name Georgium Sidus ("The Georgian Planet"), but the idea was unpopular outside England and King George's native Hanover, Germany.

German astronomer Johann Bode, who detailed Uranus' orbit, gave the planet its ultimate name. Bode argued that as Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the new planet should be named after the father of Saturn.

PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS

Uranus is blue-green in color, as a result of the methane in its mostly hydrogen-helium atmosphere. The planet is often dubbed an ice giant, since at least 80% of its mass is a fluid mix of water, methane and ammonia ice.

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-size body, or several small bodies, soon after it was formed. A 2018 study suggested the colliding world could have been twice the size of Earth.

This unusual tilt gives rise to extreme seasons that last for about 20 years. This means that for nearly a quarter of the Uranian year, which is equal to 84 Earth-years, the sun shines directly over each pole, leaving the other half of the planet to experience a long, dark and frigid winter.

Uranus has the coldest atmosphere of any of the planets in the solar system, even though it is not the most distant from the sun. That's because Uranus has little to no internal heat to supplement the heat from the sun.

INSIDE THE ICE GIANT

The seventh planet in our solar system is a giant ball of gas and liquid. It is tilted so far on its side that its axis lies nearly level with its path around the sun. Like the other gas and ice giants, Uranus has a thick cloud cover. Its blue-green color is the result of methane in its atmosphere.

URANUS' CLIMATE

The extreme axial tilt Uranus experiences can give rise to unusual weather. As sunlight reaches some areas for the first time in years, it heats up the atmosphere, triggering gigantic springtime storms, according to NASA.

However, when Voyager 2 first imaged Uranus in 1986 at the height of summer in its south, the spacecraft saw a bland-looking sphere with only about 10 or so visible clouds, leading to it to be dubbed "the most boring planet," wrote astronomer Heidi Hammel in "The Ice Giant Systems of Uranus and Neptune," a chapter in "Solar System Update" (Springer, 2007), a compilation of reviews in solar system science. It was decades later, when advanced telescopes such as Hubble came into play and Uranus' long seasons changed, before scientists witnessed the extreme weather on Uranus.

Other unusual weather on Uranus includes diamond rain, which is thought to sink thousands of miles below the surface of icy giant planets such as Uranus and Neptune. Carbon and hydrogen are thought to compress under extreme heat and pressure deep in the atmospheres of these planets to form diamonds, which are then thought to sink downward, eventually settling around the cores of those worlds.

URANUS 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 Herschel in 1787. William Lassell, who was also the first to see a moon orbiting Neptune, discovered Uranus' next two moons, Ariel and Umbriel. Nearly a century passed before Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper, of Kuiper Belt fame, found Miranda in 1948.

URANUS RESEARCH AND EXPLORATION NASA's Voyager 2 was the first and as yet, only spacecraft to visit Uranus. Although there isn't a spacecraft on its way to Uranus at the moment, astronomers regularly check in with the planet using the Hubble and Keck telescopes.

In 2011, the Planetary Science Decadal Survey recommended that NASA consider a mission to the icy planet. And in 2017, NASA suggested a number of potential future missions to Uranus in support of the forthcoming Planetary Science Decadal Survey, including flybys, orbiters and even a spacecraft to dive into Uranus' atmosphere. Scientists are still discussing the idea. In 2019, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center suggested one possible design could involve an atmospheric probe, similar to the one used in Jupiter during the Galileo mission.

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