Excerpt
Chapter 1: Welcome to Uranus!
Uranus is a planet full of surprises. It doesn’t look like the other planets, spin like the other planets, or even feel like the other planets. In fact, it’s so different that for a long time, people didn’t even know it was a planet at all. While Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were known since ancient times, Uranus wasn’t discovered until much later. And when it finally was, astronomers weren’t even sure what to make of it.
Uranus is one of the farthest planets in our Solar System. It sits way beyond Earth, so far away that the Sun looks like a tiny, bright dot in its sky. If Earth had a year that lasted as long as Uranus’s, you wouldn’t even be close to finishing your first birthday yet. A year on Uranus—one full trip around the Sun—takes 84 Earth years! That means if you lived there, you’d have to wait a very, very long time before celebrating another birthday.
Another thing that makes Uranus different is its temperature. It’s freezing cold, even colder than Neptune, which is actually farther from the Sun. This is because Uranus doesn’t give off much heat of its own. Most planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, have hot cores that radiate energy into space, but Uranus doesn’t do that as much. Scientists aren’t completely sure why, but they think something may have happened a long time ago that caused Uranus to lose a lot of its internal heat.
And then there’s the way Uranus spins. Every other planet in the Solar System spins like a top, with their poles mostly pointing up and down. But Uranus? It rolls through space on its side, almost like a ball rolling across a table. Scientists believe this strange tilt happened because something massive—maybe an asteroid or even a small planet—crashed into Uranus billions of years ago and knocked it over. Because of this, Uranus has the weirdest seasons of any planet. Each pole spends about 42 years in sunlight, followed by 42 years of total darkness. That’s almost half a century of nonstop day, then half a century of never-ending night!
Despite being such a strange world, Uranus is actually pretty calm. Unlike Jupiter, with its massive storms and raging winds, or Neptune, which has the strongest winds in the Solar System, Uranus doesn’t seem to have much going on. Its atmosphere is mostly made of hydrogen, helium, and methane, and it looks like a smooth, featureless ball of pale blue. Methane is what gives Uranus its blue-green color, because it absorbs red light and reflects blue light back into space. But if you were hoping for dramatic storms or swirling clouds, Uranus doesn’t really have much of that—at least not that we can see.
It does, however, have rings! A lot of people think Saturn is the only planet with rings, but Uranus actually has a set of its own. They’re much darker and thinner than Saturn’s, which is why they weren’t discovered until much later. Scientists believe these rings are made up of small chunks of ice and rock, leftovers from moons that broke apart long ago.
Speaking of moons, Uranus has a bunch of them. Unlike most planets, which name their moons after gods or goddesses from mythology, Uranus’s moons are named after characters from literature—specifically, works by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. That means instead of moons named after Roman or Greek gods, Uranus has moons like Titania, Oberon, and Miranda. These moons are all different sizes, with some being tiny and others stretching hundreds of miles across. One of the most interesting moons, Miranda, looks like a patchwork quilt of different landscapes. It has giant cliffs, deep valleys, and surface features that look like they’ve been smashed together from different parts of the moon. Scientists think it may have been shattered by an impact and then somehow reassembled itself over time.
Uranus is a planet full of surprises. It doesn’t look like the other planets, spin like the other planets, or even feel like the other planets. In fact, it’s so different that for a long time, people didn’t even know it was a planet at all. While Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn were known since ancient times, Uranus wasn’t discovered until much later. And when it finally was, astronomers weren’t even sure what to make of it.
Uranus is one of the farthest planets in our Solar System. It sits way beyond Earth, so far away that the Sun looks like a tiny, bright dot in its sky. If Earth had a year that lasted as long as Uranus’s, you wouldn’t even be close to finishing your first birthday yet. A year on Uranus—one full trip around the Sun—takes 84 Earth years! That means if you lived there, you’d have to wait a very, very long time before celebrating another birthday.
Another thing that makes Uranus different is its temperature. It’s freezing cold, even colder than Neptune, which is actually farther from the Sun. This is because Uranus doesn’t give off much heat of its own. Most planets, like Jupiter and Saturn, have hot cores that radiate energy into space, but Uranus doesn’t do that as much. Scientists aren’t completely sure why, but they think something may have happened a long time ago that caused Uranus to lose a lot of its internal heat.
And then there’s the way Uranus spins. Every other planet in the Solar System spins like a top, with their poles mostly pointing up and down. But Uranus? It rolls through space on its side, almost like a ball rolling across a table. Scientists believe this strange tilt happened because something massive—maybe an asteroid or even a small planet—crashed into Uranus billions of years ago and knocked it over. Because of this, Uranus has the weirdest seasons of any planet. Each pole spends about 42 years in sunlight, followed by 42 years of total darkness. That’s almost half a century of nonstop day, then half a century of never-ending night!
Despite being such a strange world, Uranus is actually pretty calm. Unlike Jupiter, with its massive storms and raging winds, or Neptune, which has the strongest winds in the Solar System, Uranus doesn’t seem to have much going on. Its atmosphere is mostly made of hydrogen, helium, and methane, and it looks like a smooth, featureless ball of pale blue. Methane is what gives Uranus its blue-green color, because it absorbs red light and reflects blue light back into space. But if you were hoping for dramatic storms or swirling clouds, Uranus doesn’t really have much of that—at least not that we can see.
It does, however, have rings! A lot of people think Saturn is the only planet with rings, but Uranus actually has a set of its own. They’re much darker and thinner than Saturn’s, which is why they weren’t discovered until much later. Scientists believe these rings are made up of small chunks of ice and rock, leftovers from moons that broke apart long ago.
Speaking of moons, Uranus has a bunch of them. Unlike most planets, which name their moons after gods or goddesses from mythology, Uranus’s moons are named after characters from literature—specifically, works by William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. That means instead of moons named after Roman or Greek gods, Uranus has moons like Titania, Oberon, and Miranda. These moons are all different sizes, with some being tiny and others stretching hundreds of miles across. One of the most interesting moons, Miranda, looks like a patchwork quilt of different landscapes. It has giant cliffs, deep valleys, and surface features that look like they’ve been smashed together from different parts of the moon. Scientists think it may have been shattered by an impact and then somehow reassembled itself over time.