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Uranus: The Ice Giant

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Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun with the third largest diameter in the entire solar system. Known as “The Ice Giant”, Uranus is very cold and windy. Because of this, it does not have a true structure. Uranus is essentially swirling fluids causing extreme pressures and temperatures to destroy any metal spacecraft that attempts to fly through Uranus’s atmosphere. Surrounded by 27 moons and 13 faint rings, it rotates at a nearly 90-degree angle from the planet of its orbit. With this in mind, the unique tilt makes Uranus rotate in a retrograde direction. Besides Venus, it is the only planet to rotate in the opposite direction than most of the planets. Around 80 percent of Uranus’s mass is made up of a dense hot fluid of icy materials, which are water, methane, and ammonia. The planet gets its blue-green color from the methane gas in the atmosphere. As for the …show more content…

Discovered by William Herschel, Uranus was the first planet discovered during modern times. It was at first mistaken for a star but on March 13, 1781, Herschel discovered it with his telescope. At first, Uranus was named “the Georgium Sidus” but was changed in 1850 to Uranus because it was not from classical mythology like the other planetary names. Only one spacecraft has visited Uranus. According to “Space-Facts.com”, “On January 24, 1986, the Voyager 2 spacecraft swept past the planet at a distance of 81,500 km. It returned the first close-up images of the planet, its moons, and rings.” Voyager 2 also discovered 10 moons additionally to the 5 formerly known. As for adaptability, we will never be able to live on Uranus due to the temperatures, pressures, and materials that define this planet. They are too extreme and erratic for organisms to acclimate to. Like Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus also has a ring system. Because the particles vary in size from micrometers to a fraction of a meter, the rings are not

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