URANUS — THE TILTED PLANET
Right, I know this post is going to be the “butt” of a lot of giggles but here goes anyway.
When you look at images of planets in our solar system, they all seem to follow a certain design. The rocky ones are round with a few moons, while the gas giants and the ice giants have rings. But one of them is different. It seems to be tilted on its side, with its rings nearly at right angles to its equator. That planet is Uranus.
Until 1781, we all thought that there were only six planets in our solar system. Then on March 13 of that year, exactly 240 years ago, astronomer William Herschel identified a seventh planet, when he observed a faint object in the constellation Gemini. At first, he thought it was a comet but then later decided that this was a new planet — the first one ever observed through a telescope. It would be two years before it was actually accepted as a planet, in part because of observations made by another astronomer Johann Elert Bode.
Although Herschel wanted to name it after the monarch of the United Kingdom, the tradition was to name planets after mythological figures and this is why it became Uranus — Greek god of the sky, grandfather of Zeus (or Jupiter) and father of Cronos (or Saturn).
Uranus was formed 4.5 billion years ago, as a result of swirling gas and dust collapsing due to gravity. Like the…
