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Uranus:
The seventh planet from the sun and the third largest. Uranus was discovered by William Herschel in 1781. The planet is about 1,783 million miles (2,871 kilometers) from the sun—19 times farther away than Earth—and it takes 84 years to make one orbit. Like Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus is a giant planet made up mostly of gases. About 31,763 miles (51,138 kilometers) across, Uranus is about halfway in size between Jupiter and Earth. Uranus is different than the rest of the planets in our solar system because it is tilted 98 degrees. It appears to rotate lying on its side! From Earth, at times we can actually view one of the Uranus's poles head-on. The atmosphere is composed of hydrogen, helium, and methane. Uranus has a system of rings which were not discovered until 1977. The ring system contains eleven dark rings composed of different sized particles. Uranus has 27 known natural satellites, some are located within the rings and some outside of the rings.
