Uranus: History

Four and a half billion years ago Uranus was formed along, with the other planets in our solar system, from the solar nebula. Uranus received a great deal of rock and ice; enough to make it the third-largest planet in the solar system. Though it has less mass than Neptune, the fourth-largest planet, it still clocks in at 14.5 times the mass of Earth.

Timeline

1781	Herschel discovers Uranus while making a second all-sky survey, believes it a comet; Maskelyne proposes it is a planet
1783	First elliptical orbit predicted for Uranus
1784	Position predictions fail, eventually leading to the discovery of Neptune
1787	Herschel discovers the first two moons of Uranus, Titania and Oberon
1821	Bouvard publishes tables of Uranus in which he unsuccessfully attempts to “solve” the problem of Uranus’s orbit
1977	Uranus’s rings discovered