Why is Uranus on its Side? | The Planets | Earth Science: With Fran Bagenal. Far out in the Solar system lies the ultra-cold planet Uranus with an oddly tilted axis and it's own collection of rings.
A frame from a high-resolution simulation of what could have happened when the planet Uranus was hit by another large celestial object. (Image credit: Jacob Kegerreis, Durham University) Scientists are looking for an impact at the system because Uranus is tilted strangely on its side, with all...
After the advent of telescopes, astronomers discovered two new planets, Uranus and Neptune, which are too faint to spot with the naked eye (Note that this definition of "planet" is following the Greco-Roman tradition on which the International Astronomical Union or IAU's community definitions are...
Pluto was discovered in 1930 at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, by astronomer Clyde W. Tombaugh. The existence of this planet was actually proposed years before by American Percival Lowell, who had theorized that slight disturbances in the orbits of Uranus and Neptune were caused by...
Even the two buildings that suffered the most damage remained largely intact, allowing residents to climb to safety out the windows of upper stories. One of them, the rounded, red brick Uranus Building, which leaned precariously after its first floors collap...
“splashed” the moon into orbit. That impact, as well as tidal effects from the moon itself, have radically changed the length of the day on Earth. Uranus is also believed to be the victim of an even bigger collision that tilted it’s rotation axis around 98° from it’s orbital axis...
In short, the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west because of our planet’s rotation. During the course of the year, the amount of daylight we experience is mitigated by our planet’s tilted axis. If, like Venus, Uranus and Pluto, a large enough asteroid or celestial object wer...
Uranus: Though orbiting the sun in a relatively circular orbit, Uranus tilts a whopping 82 degrees on its axis, leading to extreme seasons that last about 20 years. So for about a quarter of a Uranian year, which equals 84 Earth years, the sun shines directly over one of the poles. Th...
Separated by the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, they’re on the other side of it than the inner planets. The outer planets include Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. They should be distinguished from superior planets, which are those that are further away from the Sun than the Ea...