Uranus - Research Article from Macmillan Science Library: Space Sciences

This encyclopedia article consists of approximately 4 pages of information about Uranus.

Uranus - Research Article from Macmillan Science Library: Space Sciences

This encyclopedia article consists of approximately 4 pages of information about Uranus.
This section contains 1,166 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Uranus Encyclopedia Article

Uranus was the first planet to be discovered that had not been known since antiquity. Although Uranus is just bright enough to be seen with the naked eye, and in fact had appeared in some early star charts as an unidentified star, English astronomer William Herschel was the first to recognize it as a planet in 1781.

The planet's benign appearance gives no hint of a history fraught with catastrophe: Sometime in Uranus's past, a huge collision wrenched the young planet. As a result, the rotation pole of Uranus is now tilted more than 90 degrees from the plane of the planet's orbit. Uranus travels in a nearly circular orbit at an average distance of almost 3 billion kilometers (1.9 billion miles) from the Sun (about nineteen times the distance from Earth to the Sun).

A Hubble Space Telescope generated image of Uranus, revealing 10 of its 21 known satellites and its four major rings, August 8, 1998. A Hubble Space Telescope generated image of Uranus, revealing 10 of its 21 known satellites and its four major...

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This section contains 1,166 words
(approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page)
Buy the Uranus Encyclopedia Article
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Uranus from Macmillan. Copyright © 2001-2006 by Macmillan Reference USA, an imprint of the Gale Group. All rights reserved.