Uranus Facts

Uranus Facts 

Uranus likes to be a bit different.

It shows off a majestic blue/green haze due to its high levels of methane gas and rolls like a barrel rather than spinning like Earth and the other planets in our Solar System.

• Uranus spins lying on its side (like a barrel), this is perhaps due to a large collision early in its formation.
• Uranus was the first planet discovered by telescope.

• Since Uranus takes 84 Earth years to go around the sun, this means that each of its poles is in daylight for 42 years and in darkness for the next 42.

• Uranus’s atmosphere is mostly hydrogen but it also contains large amounts of a gas called methane. Methane absorbs red light and scatters blue light so a blue-green methane haze hides the interior of the planet from view.

• Uranus hides its interior but scientists guess that under the hydrogen-methane atmosphere is a hot, slushy ocean of water, ammonia and methane thousands of miles deep wrapped around a rocky core.