Tour of the Solar System: The Planet Uranus

The butt of many jokes while I was growing up, the planet Uranus was known as the “butt” planet among the gang of kids I ran with in my younger days. And since Uranus is considered one of the gas giants, the most famous saying of all: The gases of Uranus are not safe to inhale, it would kill us all" was mentioned quite often to kiddie giggles.

Now we are heading to the outer reaches of the solar system in our trek across our little ring planets. Uranus orbits the sun at about 1.7 billion miles with some variation in its elliptical orbit. The rotational spin of Uranus is unlike any of the other designated planets within the Solar System.

Uranus sits at 97 degrees with respect to the plane of its elliptical orbit, nearly pointing a pole at the Sun during solstice period. This results in either one or the other pole in receiving nearly 42 years of “summer” or “winter.” However, Uranus is actually warmer at its equator, due to some unknown internal process occurring within its atmosphere.

Rings were first definitively observer at Uranus in 1977 by Dunham and Mink using the Kupier Airborne Observatory while studying a star ocultation. Some mention of rings were also mentioned by William Herschel. The rings were seen one again when Voyager 2 made a pass in 1986.

Source of factual information: Uranus on Wikipedia