The Mysterious Brother: Uranus

Hi everybody, sorry for forgetting posting last week. But I would like to retake the theme that I wanted to talk about.

I don’t know why but I feel chills when I think about the planet Uranus. This enigmatic blue-green world:

• Is about four times the size of Earth and is 2.9 billion kilometers (1.8 billion miles) from the Sun. (Burnham 160).

• His name comes from the ancient Greek deity of the Heavens, the earliest supreme god.
• It is the only giant planet whose equator is nearly at right angles to its orbit.
• It takes 84 terrestrial years to complete his orbit around the Sun.
• Is thought to have a small rocky core enveloped in a thick layer of liquid ice and rock, but unlike Jupiter and Saturn it lacks a layer of metallic hydrogen. (Burnham 160).

 The opaque atmosphere seems to hide some kind of exciting millenary secrets. But you wouldn’t like to visit this planet if you’d know that Uranus is plenty of methane and ammonia, both substances are highly poisonous for any kind of living thing.

The methane is largely responsible for the planet’s blue-green color, so we could say that it is a very poisonous world. Actually, Most of our knowledge of the planet came from a single spacecraft, Voyager 2, which sped by Uranus at close range in 1986. (Burnham 160)

Up until Voyager’s visit to Uranus; we knew of just 5 moons; Voyager spied 10 more and subsequent discoveries added 6, giving a total of 21.

Special Fact: Almost all Uranus moons are named after characters from Shakespeare’s plays. (Burnham 161).

Sources:

Burnham, Robert. Astronomy: The Definitive Guide. Singapore: Barnes & Noble, Inc., 2003.