Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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 ...
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.
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 ...
Oberon orbits Uranus at a distance of about 584,000 km, being the farthest from the planet among its five major moons. [e] Oberon's orbit has a small orbital eccentricity and inclination relative to the equator of Uranus. [4] Its orbital period is around 13.5 days, coincident with its rotational period.
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.
Miranda is the least spherical of Uranus's satellites, with an equatorial diameter 3% wider than its polar diameter. Only water has been detected so far on Miranda's surface, though it has been speculated that methane , ammonia , carbon monoxide or nitrogen may also exist at 3% concentrations.
For gaseous or fluid bodies, such as stars and giant planets, the period of rotation varies from the object's equator to its pole due to a phenomenon called differential rotation. Typically, the stated rotation period for a giant planet (such as Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) is its internal rotation period, as determined from the rotation ...
Wunda is a large crater on the surface of Uranus' moon Umbriel. [2] It is 131 km in diameter and is located near the equator of Umbriel. The crater is named after Wunda , a dark spirit of Australian aboriginal mythology .