Uranus :: Essays Papers

Uranus2,870,990,000 km (19.218 AU) from the Sun, Uranus hangs on the wall of space as a mysterious blue green planet. With a kitty of 8.683e25 kg and a diameter of 51,118 km at the equator, Uranus is the third largest planet in our solar system. It has been described as a planet that was slugged a few one thousand thousand years ago by a large onrushing object, knocked down (never to pulsate up), and now proceeds to roll around an 84-year orbit on its belly. As the strangest of the Jovian planets, the description is accurate. Uranus has a 17 hour and 14 handsome day and takes 84 years to make its way about the fair weather with an axis tilted at around 90 with retrograde rotation. crazy still is the fact that Uranus axis is almost parallel to the ecliptic, hence the formulation on its belly. Uranus is so far away that scientists knew comparatively smaller about it before NASAs Voyager 2 undertook its historic first encounter with the planet. The space vehicle flew clo sely past distant Uranus, and came within 81,500 kilometers (50,600 miles) of Uranuss cloudtops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and mass amounts of other scientific data about Uranus, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and magnetic environment. However, term Voyager has revealed much about the gas giant, many questions remain to be answered.The memorial of the planets discovery is the first we have of its kind Uranus was the first planet to be discovered with a telescope. The circumstances surrounding the discovery of the object atomic number 18 befitting of the odd planet. The earliest recorded sighting of Uranus was in 1690 by John Flamsteed, but the object was catalogued as another star. On knock against 13, 1781 Uranus was sighted again by amateur uranologist William Herschel and thought to be a comet or nebulous star. In 1784, Jean-Dominique Cassini, director of the Paris picket and prominent professional astronomer, made the following com mentA discovery so unexpected could only have singular circumstances, for it was not due to an astronomer and the marvelous telescopewas not the work of an optician it is Mr. Herschel, a German musician, to whom we owe the knowledge of this seventh principal planet. (Hunt, 35)Four years passed before Uranus was accepted as a new planet, the first to be discovered in modern times.