Uranus

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus is about four times wider than Earth. If Earth were a large apple, Uranus would be the size of a basketball.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus orbits our Sun, a star, and is the seventh planet from the Sun at a distance of about 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers).

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus takes about 17 hours to rotate once (a Uranian day), and about 84 Earth years to complete an orbit of the Sun (a Uranian year).

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus is an ice giant. Most of its mass is a hot, dense fluid of "icy" materials – water, methane and ammonia – above a small rocky core.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus has an atmosphere made mostly of molecular hydrogen and atomic helium, with a small amount of methane.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus has 27 known moons, and they are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus has 13 known rings. The inner rings are narrow and dark and the outer rings are brightly colored.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to fly by Uranus. No spacecraft has orbited this distant planet to study it at length and up close.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus cannot support life as we know it.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Like Venus, Uranus rotates east to west. But Uranus is unique in that it rotates on its side.

Source: NASA

[Joseph Buell]

Uranus has a moon named Juliet, but not one named Romeo.