Uranus
Mythology
Uranus is the first modern planet. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1781. Herschel wanted to name the newly found planet after the king of England, but instead a group of astronomers agreed to give it a traditional Roman name. Uranus was the sky god before the Olympian gods existed.
 Facts
Uranus has a few things about it that are immediately very strange. For one thing, its axis is actually tilted so much that instead of revolving on its side, it revolves upside down! This also makes the rings go up and down, giving it a very strange look. Uranus completes a day in 17.9 hours, and a year in 84 Earth years, and has a diameter of 51,118 km (4 Earth diameters). When Uranus was found, Herschel effectively doubled the size of the solar system, as Uranus is located 2,871 million km (19.2 AU) from the sun.
Viewing Uranus
Uranus is more difficult to find, which is why it wasn’t discovered until the late seventeen hundreds. You need to have a star chart and telescope, as Uranus is 6th magnitude at brightest, which is only just bright enough to be seen naked eye. Even then though, it will just look like a pinprick of light, and you should have a chart to make sure you are looking at the right pinprick. Uranus has at least 15 known satellites, most of them found when Voyager 2 flew by in 1986. One of the moons, Miranda, looks like it had a troubled past, and the jumbled surface suggests it may have been blown apart then came back together again, possibly in a collision that also knocked Uranus on its side.
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