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What is special about Uranus?

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science is pretty interesting, too. The Latest: The jokes , the y write the mselves. The a striking difference from the gas giant planets located closer to the Sun. What clouds of Uranus have in common with rotten eggs. The composition of Uranus' clouds had long been a mystery. In April 2017, a global research team found hydrogen sulfide, the odiferous gas that most people avoid, in Uranus' cloud tops-

The first planet found with the aid of a telescope, Uranus was discovered in 1781 by astronomer William Herschel, although he originally thought it was either a comet or a star. It was two years later that the object was universally accepted as a new planet, in part because of observations by astronomer Johann Elert Bode. Herschel tried unsuccessfully to name his discovery Georgium Sidus after King George III. Instead the planet was named for Uranus, the Greek god of the sky, as suggested by Johann Bode.

Ten Things to Know About Uranus

Did You Know?

Did You Know?

Uranus' unique sideways rotation makes for weird seasons. The planet's north pole experiences 21 years of nighttime in winter, 21 years of daytime in summer and 42 years of day and night in the spring and fall.

Pop Culture

Pop Culture

Uranus is the "butt" of more than a few jokes and witty (and not so witty) puns, but it's also a frequent destination in various fictional stories, such as the video game Mass Effect and TV shows like Doctor Who. The radioactive element uranium was named after Uranus when it was discovered in 1789, just eight years after the planet was discovered.

Make Your Own 3D Images

More to Explore

With a few materials and a few steps, you can build your own glasses to view 3D images.

In this 1-hour activity, students shrink the scale of the vast solar system to the size of their neighborhood.

In this lesson, students will replicate the Voyage model to experience the size of the solar system.

› More

Resources

Power to Explore: Radioisotope Power

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science is pretty interesting, too. The Latest: The jokes , the y write the mselves. The a striking difference from the gas giant planets located closer to the Sun. What clouds of Uranus have in common with rotten eggs. The composition of Uranus' clouds had long been a mystery.

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Is Pluto a planet?

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Which sentence best describes Pluto?

1. Pluto is actually closer to the Sun than Neptune for about 8% of its orbit.

2. Pluto is just one of many icy objects in a distant area of our solar system.

3. Pluto and its large, orbiting companion object Charon, are tipped on their sides.

4. All of the above.

Well, just pick the answer you like best, because they are all true!

Pluto is a dwarf planet that lies in the Kuiper Belt. It's an area full of icy bodies and other dwarf planets at the edge of our solar system. Because Pluto is the biggest known object in this region, some call it "King of the Kuiper Belt."

One thing is certain. Pluto and its neighborhood are very peculiar. If scientists could unravel some of their mysteries, we would know more about how our solar system formed.

More Fun Facts About Pluto:

Pluto is only about half the width of the United States. Charon is about half the size of Pluto. Charon is the largest moon compared to the body it orbits (whether planet or dwarf planet) of any moon in the solar system.

Almost all the planets travel around the Sun in nearly perfect circles. But Pluto does not. It takes an oval-shaped path with the Sun nowhere near its center. What's more, its path is quite tilted from the nice, orderly plane where all the planets orbit. (Mercury has a slightly lop-sided orbit, although not nearly so much as Pluto's.)

Compared to most of the planets and their moons, the whole Pluto-Charon system is tipped on its side. Like the planets, Pluto's spin axis stays pointed in the same direction as it orbits the Sun. But unlike all planets except Uranus, Pluto is tipped on its side. The planets' axes of rotation stand more or less upright from the plane of their orbits.

If you lived on Pluto, you'd have to live 248 Earth years to celebrate your first birthday in Pluto-years.

If you lived on Pluto, you would see Charon from only one side of the planet. Charon's orbit around Pluto takes about six and one-half Earth days. Pluto's day (that is, one complete rotation) takes exactly the same amount of time. So, Charon always "hovers" over the same spot on Pluto's surface, and the same side of Charon always faces Pluto.

At Pluto's current distance from the Sun, the temperature on its surface is about 400 degrees below zero Fahrenheit! It will get even colder as it moves farther from the Sun. From Pluto, the Sun looks like just a bright dot in the sky, the brightest star visible. The light from the Sun is as bright on Pluto as the light from the full Moon is on Earth.

If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh only 7 pounds on Pluto!

Pluto orbits in a far-out region of the solar system called the Kuiper (rhymes with viper) Belt. There are lots of icy, rocky objects out there. But they are so far from the Sun they are really hard to see, even with powerful telescopes.

Why Pluto is *not* a planet

A while back, Pluto was the ninth planet from the Sun. It was also the smallest planet.

But not anymore. Poor Pluto. Just how did it get "kicked out" of our family of planets? And who are its "real" family members?

Astronomers have already named three other objects in the solar system that are about the same small size as Pluto. They are Ceres [SEAR-ees], Makemake (MAH-kee-MAH-kee], and Eris (AIR-iss]. These objects, along with Pluto, are much smaller than the "other" planets.

Ceres orbits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Makemake, like Pluto, is part of the Kuiper [KI-per] Belt, which is a region of trillions of icy objects orbiting beyond Neptune. Eris' orbit is even farther out.

Astronomers have put these objects into a new family called dwarf planets.

Let's go there!

We finally got to visit Pluto, Charon, and the Kuiper Belt! On January 19, 2006, NASA launched a robot spacecraft on the long journey. This mission is called New Horizons. The spacecraft arrived at Pluto in July 2015, and will continue to study other objects in the Kuiper Belt from about 2018 to 2022.

With New Horizons, we are visiting and learning about the objects at the very edge of our solar system. They may help us understand how our solar system formed.

Related Resources for Educators

Our World: Pluto - Our First Dwarf Planet

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Dwarf planet Pluto is still fun to study.

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Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. It is not the only planet to have rings-made of chunks of ice and rock-but none are as spectacular or as complicated as Saturn's.

Like fellow gas giant Jupiter, Saturn is a massive ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

Ten Things to Know About Saturn

Did You Know?

Did You Know?

Twice every 29 and a half years the great planet Saturn appears ringless.

In one of nature's most dramatic examples of "now-you see-them, now-you-don't," NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured Saturn as the planet's magnificent ring system turned edge-on. Credit: NASA/JPL/STScI

This is an optical illusion:

Earthlings cannot see Saturn's rings when the rings are edge-on as viewed from the Earth. They are barely visible through powerful telescopes.

Pop Culture

Pop Culture

Perhaps the most iconic of all the planets in our solar system, Saturn is heavily present in pop culture.

It provides a backdrop for numerous science fiction stories, movies and TV shows, comics, and video games, including the Cthulhu Mythos, WALL-E, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek, Dead Space 2 and Final Fantasy VII. In Tim Burton's film Beetlejuice, a dusty, fictional Saturn is populated by giant sandworms. And in the 2014 movie Interstellar, the wormhole that enables the astronauts to travel to another galaxy appears near Saturn.

Saturn is also the namesake of Saturday, arguably the best day of the week.

Resources

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Adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets, Saturn is unique among the planets. It is not the only planet to have rings-made of chunks of ice and rock-but none are as spectacular or as complicated as Saturn's. Like fellow gas giant Jupiter, Saturn is a massive ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium.

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What planet is the third from the sun?

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Please progress through the slides. Answer the questions on a sheet of paper and turn it in.

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Watch the video, paying close attention the the attributes of each planet of the solar system.
List the planets in order beginning with the closest to the sun.

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Outer Space: "We are the Planets," The Solar System Song by StoryBots | Netflix Jr