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On the other side of Uranus's orbit, the orientation of the poles towards the Sun is reversed. Each pole gets around 42 years of continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of darkness. [74] Near the time of the equinoxes, the Sun faces the equator of Uranus, giving a period of day–night cycles similar to those seen on most of the other planets.
Its unusual tilt makes Uranus appear to orbit the sun like a rolling ball. Uranus, which orbits almost 20 times further from the sun than Earth does, has 28 known moons and two sets of rings.
A synodic day (or synodic rotation period or solar day) is the period for a celestial object to rotate once in relation to the star it is orbiting, and is the basis of solar time. The synodic day is distinguished from the sidereal day , which is one complete rotation in relation to distant stars [ 1 ] and is the basis of sidereal time.
27.321661 days [7] (equal to sidereal orbital period due to spin-orbit locking, a sidereal lunar month) 27 d 7 h 43 m 11.5 s: 29.530588 days [7] (equal to synodic orbital period, due to spin-orbit locking, a synodic lunar month) none (due to spin-orbit locking) Mars: 1.02595675 days [3] 1 d 0 h 37 m 22.663 s: 1.02749125 [8] days: Ceres: 0.37809 ...
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 ...
Sun-synchronous orbit: An orbit which combines altitude and inclination in such a way that the satellite passes over any given point of the planets's surface at the same local solar time. Such an orbit can place a satellite in constant sunlight and is useful for imaging, spy, and weather satellites.
Because Uranus orbits the Sun almost on its side, and its moons orbit in the planet's equatorial plane, they (including Oberon) are subject to an extreme seasonal cycle. Both northern and southern poles spend 42 years in a complete darkness, and another 42 years in continuous sunlight, with the sun rising close to the zenith over one of the ...
The Sun and planets of the Solar System (distances not to scale). The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system of the Sun and the objects that orbit it. It formed about 4.6 billion years ago when a dense region of a molecular cloud collapsed, forming the Sun and a protoplanetary disc.