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Nevertheless, Uranus is hotter at its equator than at its poles. The underlying mechanism that causes this is unknown. The reason for Uranus's unusual axial tilt is also not known with certainty, but the usual speculation is that during the formation of the Solar System, an Earth-sized protoplanet collided with Uranus, causing the skewed ...
Uranus is an oblate spheroid, which causes its visible area to become larger when viewed from the poles. This explains in part its brighter appearance at solstices. [16] Uranus is also known to exhibit strong zonal variations in albedo (see above). [10] For instance, the south polar region of Uranus is much brighter than the equatorial bands. [3]
The orbits of the regular moons are nearly coplanar with Uranus's equator, which is tilted 97.77° to its orbit. Uranus's irregular moons have elliptical and strongly inclined (mostly retrograde) orbits at large distances from the planet. [3] William Herschel discovered the first two moons, Titania and Oberon, in 1787.
In fact, their inclinations (0.06°, 0.05° and 0.03°) were large enough for Voyager 2 to observe their elevations above the Uranian equatorial plane, which were 24–46 km. [12] Rings 6, 5 and 4 are also the narrowest rings of Uranus, measuring 1.6–2.2 km, 1.9–4.9 km and 2.4–4.4 km wide, respectively.
Venus rotates clockwise, and Uranus has been knocked on its side and rotates almost perpendicular to the rest of the Solar System. The ecliptic remains within 3° of the invariable plane over five million years, [2] but is now inclined about 23.44° to Earth's celestial equator used for the coordinates of poles. This large inclination means ...
According to the IAU's explicit count, there are eight planets in the Solar System; four terrestrial planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars) and four giant planets, which can be divided further into two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). When excluding the Sun, the four giant planets account for more than ...
Although Uranus is presently largely blank in appearance, it has been historically shown to have occasional features, such as in March and April 1884, when astronomers Henri Joseph Perrotin, Norman Lockyer, and Charles Trépied observed a bright, elongated spot (presumably a storm) circling the equator of the planet. [7] Planet Uranus - North ...
The exceptions – the planets with retrograde rotation – are Venus and Uranus. Venus's axial tilt is 177°, which means it is rotating almost exactly in the opposite direction to its orbit. Uranus has an axial tilt of 97.77°, so its axis of rotation is approximately parallel with the plane of the Solar System.