Uranus

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Uranus
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Brief History

• 7th Planet from the Sun
• 3rd largest planet by mass
• Named after the ancient Greek god for Heaven
• Discovered in 1781 by William Herschel
• Visited by Voyager 2 on January 24, 1986

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Statistics

• Distance from Sun 2.87 billions kilometers
  19.22 AU
• Diameter 51,118 km 4.01 Earth Diameters
• Mass 8.683e25 kg 14.535 Earth Mass
• Satellites 21 named moons and 6 unnamed moons
• Composition mostly rock and ice only about 15
  Hydrogen
• Atmosphere 83 Hydrogen
• 15 Helium
• 2 Methane

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Statistics

• Orbit around sun 84.01 earth years
• Day 17 hours 14 minutes
• Color Blue-green color due to Methane gas in
  the upper atmosphere which absorbs red light
• Density 1.2 g/cm3
• Albedo 0.35

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Internal Structure

• Similar to Neptunes
• Outer envelop hydrogen, helium and methane
  about the mass of 1-2 earths
• Mantle water, methane, and ammonia under high
  pressure and temperature, about 10-15 earth
  masses
• Core rock and ice, about 1 earth mass

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Uranus Rings

• First 9 rings discovered in 1977
• 11 known rings
• Very dark and faint
• Outermost rings is the brightest Epsilon
• Composed of fine dust to large particles of ice
  boulders up to 10 meters in diameter
• Most rings 2-12 km across

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Uranus Rings

• Shepherd moons keep the dust in rings
• Without the moons gravity the rings would spread
  apart until they disappeared

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Uranus Moons

• 21 named moons and 6 unnamed moons
• Named after writings of Shakespeare and Pope
• Mostly circular orbits except outermost four,
  which are much more elliptical
• 3 distinct classes 11 small, dark inner moons
• 5 large moons Newly
  discovered further out moons

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Titania

• Largest moon
• Radius 788 km
• Mass 3.49e21 kg
• Distance from Uranus 435,840 
• Density 1.7 gm/cm3

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Oberon

• 2nd largest moon
• Radius 761.4 km
• Mass 3.03e 21 kg
• Distance from Uranus
• 582,600 km
• Density 1.64 gm/cm3

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Moon Characteristics

• Like our own moon
• Most are covered in craters and trenches
• A few mountains
• Icy

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Uranus is Weird

• Uranus is tipped on its side
• Result of a planetoid colliding with it
• This causes the magnetic field to be tilted 60
  degrees from the planets axis of rotation
• The source of the magnetic field is unknown and
  the the tail was twisted into a corkscrew by the
  collision

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Voyager 2

• Launched on April 20, 1977
• Passed Uranus on January 24, 1986