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The rings were directly imaged when Voyager 2 passed Uranus in 1986. [115] Voyager 2 also discovered two additional faint rings, bringing the total number to eleven. [115] In December 2005, the Hubble Space Telescope detected a pair of previously unknown rings. The largest is located twice as far from Uranus as the previously known rings.
For this reason, scientists often classify Uranus and Neptune as "ice giants" to distinguish them from the gas giants. Uranus's atmosphere is similar to Jupiter's and Saturn's in its primary composition of hydrogen and helium, but it contains more "ices" such as water, ammonia, and methane, along with traces of other hydrocarbons.
A giant planet, sometimes referred to as a jovian planet (Jove being another name for the Roman god Jupiter), is a diverse type of planet much larger than Earth. Giant planets are usually primarily composed of low-boiling point materials (), rather than rock or other solid matter, but massive solid planets can also exist.
The planet Uranus, which uranium is named after The discovery of the element is credited to the German chemist Martin Heinrich Klaproth . While he was working in his experimental laboratory in Berlin in 1789, Klaproth was able to precipitate a yellow compound (likely sodium diuranate ) by dissolving pitchblende in nitric acid and neutralizing ...
Temperature profile of the Uranian troposphere and lower stratosphere. Cloud and haze layers are also indicated. The Uranian atmosphere can be divided into three main layers: the troposphere, between altitudes of −300 [a] and 50 km and pressures from 100 to 0.1 bar; the stratosphere, spanning altitudes between 50 and 4000 km and pressures between 0.1 and 10 −10 bar; and the thermosphere ...
Uranus was the last giant planet without any known irregular moons until 1997, when astronomers using ground-based telescopes discovered Sycorax and Caliban. From 1999 to 2003, astronomers continued searching for irregular moons of Uranus using more powerful ground-based telescopes, resulting in the discovery of seven more Uranian irregular ...
The exceptions are Venus [78] and Uranus, [79] which rotate clockwise, though Uranus's extreme axial tilt means there are differing conventions on which of its poles is "north", and therefore whether it is rotating clockwise or anti-clockwise. [80] Regardless of which convention is used, Uranus has a retrograde rotation relative to its orbit. [79]
Uranus is the third-largest and fourth most massive planet in the Solar System. It orbits the Sun at a distance of about 2.8 billion kilometers (1.7 billion miles) and completes one orbit every 84 years. The length of a day on Uranus as measured by Voyager 2 is 17 hours and 14 minutes. Uranus is distinguished by the fact that it is tipped on ...