Uranus is an ice giant (instead of a gas giant). It is mostly made of flowing icy materials above a solid core. Uranus has a thick atmosphere made of methane, hydrogen, and helium. Uranus is the only planet that spins on its side.
Structure. Uranus is one of two ice giants in the outer solar system (the other is Neptune). Most (80% or more) of the planet's mass is made up of a hot dense fluid of "icy" materials – water, methane, and ammonia – above a small rocky core. Near the core, it heats up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit (4,982 degrees Celsius) ...
Uranus (left) and Neptune are classified as ice giant planets because their rocky, icy cores are proportionally larger than the amount of gas they contain. The gas giants — Jupiter and Saturn — contain far more gas than rock or ice.
The four gas giants in our solar system are Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.
The planet Uranus has clouds made up of hydrogen sulphide, the gas that gives rotten eggs their unpleasant smell.
Poor old Uranus just can't seem to catch a break. Something already tipped the planet on its side, so its orbit is perpendicular to those of the other Solar System planets.
The solar system once had five giant gaseous planets rather than the four it has today. That's the conclusion from a computer simulation of the solar system's evolution, which suggests the fifth giant was hurled into interstellar space some 4 billion years ago, after a violent encounter with Jupiter.
Uranus holds the record for the coldest temperature ever measured in the Solar System: a very chilly -224℃. The temperature on Neptune is still very cold, of course – usually around -214℃ – but Uranus beats that. The reason why Uranus is so cold is nothing to do with its distance from the Sun.
Giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn have a solid planetary core beneath a thick envelope of hydrogen and helium gas. But no-one has previously been able to see what these solid cores are like.
Jupiter is called a failed star because it contains the same gases as the Sun (hydrogen and helium). However, it is not as big as the Sun. Jupiter is lightweight compared to the Sun.
Neptune | AMNH. The smallest and most distant of the "gas giant" planets. Neptune has much in common with its three huge neighbors Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.
Same as with Venus, Uranus also had counterclockwise rotation until a gigantic impact changed everything. The explanation for this is that in its formation history, Uranus collided with an Earth-sized object which lead to the change of its rotation.
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun which looks green color. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. Uranus is similar in composition to Neptune, and both have different bulk chemical composition from that of the larger gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.
Like the other giant planets in our solar system, Uranus does not have a solid surface. Scientists believe that the interior is made up of a solid rocky core covered by a dense liquid layer of water and ammonia.
The planet is often dubbed an ice giant, since at least 80% of its mass is a fluid mix of water, methane and ammonia ice. Unlike the other planets of the solar system, Uranus is tilted so far that it essentially orbits the sun on its side, with the axis of its spin nearly pointing at the star.
Planetary surface temperatures tend to get colder the farther a planet is from the Sun. Venus is the exception, as its proximity to the Sun, and its dense atmosphere make it our solar system's hottest planet.
Venus' thick atmosphere traps heat creating a runaway greenhouse effect – making it the hottest planet in our solar system with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead. The greenhouse effect makes Venus roughly 700°F (390°C) hotter than it would be without a greenhouse effect.
What is the hottest known planet? Venus is not the hottest planet in the universe. The hottest known planet is KELT-9b, which has a surface temperature of 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit, or 4,300 degrees Celsius, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.
The Fifth Giant was a planet orbiting between Saturn and Uranus. It was ejected by Jupiter and Saturn around 4 billion years ago.
Konstantin Batygin and Michael E. Brown suggested that Planet Nine may be the core of a giant planet that was ejected from its original orbit by Jupiter during the genesis of the Solar System.
Astrophysicists have found that a close encounter with Jupiter about four billion years ago may have resulted in another planet's ejection from the Solar System altogether.
Jan. 24, 1986: NASA's Voyager 2 made the first - and so far the only - visit to Uranus.
Uranus, the 7th planet out from the Sun was discovered accidentally in 1781 when William Herschel was trying out the 7" telescope that he had built. It is barely visible to the naked eye, but through a telescope it looks like a blue-green disc. It's about four times the size of Earth.