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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. [76] 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.
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 ...
For instance, for completing an orbit every 24 hours around a mass of 100 kg, a small body has to orbit at a distance of 1.08 meters from the central body's center of mass. In the special case of perfectly circular orbits, the semimajor axis a is equal to the radius of the orbit, and the orbital velocity is constant and equal to
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 ...
Sycorax / ˈ s ɪ k ɒ r æ k s / is the largest irregular satellite of Uranus. It was discovered in September, 1997 on the Hale Telescope in California. Sycorax's orbit is retrograde, irregular, and much more distant than that of Oberon, the furthest of Uranus' regular moons. With a diameter of over 150 kilometres (93 mi), it is the largest ...
Miranda, also designated Uranus V, is the smallest and innermost of Uranus's five round satellites. It was discovered by Gerard Kuiper on 16 February 1948 at McDonald Observatory in Texas , and named after Miranda from William Shakespeare 's play The Tempest . [ 9 ]
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.
Because Uranus orbits the Sun almost on its side, and its moons orbit in the planet's equatorial plane, Umbriel and the other moons are subject to an extreme seasonal cycle. Both northern and southern poles spend 42 years in complete darkness, and another 42 years in continuous sunlight, with the Sun rising close to the zenith over one of the ...