Essay Topics about URANUS

URANUS

This planet is named after the ancient Greek Goddess of astronomy, Uranus.

There are some interesting features about it. It is the seventh planet from the sun, about 1784 million km away. Hence, it is too cold with the temperature dipping to – 210 degree C even during midday!

Special features of Uranus! The very appearance of it is odd! It is tilted and its orbit around the sun seems to be rolling like a ball. The angle of its tilt is 98 degree. This causes the planet’s equator running vertical. Why it is tilted is that, there could have been some collision with space objects before!

Uranus is the third largest planet, measuring 51,118 km diameter and weighs nearly 15 times of the earth. It takes just eight minutes for the sun light to reach the earth, but here in Uranus, it takes nearly two and half hours! And the time duration it takes to orbit once around the sun is, 84 years.

British astronomer William Hershel discovered Uranus in 1781. He wanted to name it as George, dedicating his discovery to the King George – III. But it was ruled out. He further identified two of the 17 moons in this planet!

Because of the presence of methane on the surface, Uranus looks rather blue. The day and night last for 20 years! And the wind blows here at 2000 km/ph speed! The ice cold ocean here comprising liquid natural gas is thousands of km deep! Scientists say that if a man just takes a dip in this ocean even for a split second, he would freeze to death instantaneously with the bones shattering to pieces!

There are 17 moons here. Voyager 2 spacecraft, during 1986 probe, identified five bigger and ten smaller moons in Uranus! What is amusing is that, all the 17 moons are named after the characters in Shakespeare’s play! The five bigger ones are: 1. Miranda, 2. Ariel, 3. Oberon, 4. Titania, and 5. Umbriel. The other two moons were already identified by Hershell.