ice giant

Uranus

A pale blue-green ice giant that rolls around the Sun on its side, with faint dark rings and moons named after Shakespeare characters.

Distance from Earth today: 2.77 billion km18.52 AU · light: 2 h 34 min
Distance from the Sun today: 2.91 billion km19.43 AU
As of: 3 November 2026Live distance and chart →

Where it is today

Top view of the plane of Earth’s orbit, compressed distance scale. Open on the big map with the time slider →

Facts

Diameter: 51,118 km
Mass: 86.8 × 10²⁴ kg
Density: 1,270 kg/m³
Surface gravity: 8.7 m/s²
Escape velocity: 21.3 km/s
Rotation period: 17.2 h (retrograde)
Length of day: 17.2 h
Mean distance from the Sun: 2.87 billion km (19.16 AU)
Perihelion: 2.73 billion km
Aphelion: 3.00 billion km
Orbital period: 83.75 years
Mean orbital velocity: 6.8 km/s
Orbital eccentricity: 0.047
Orbital inclination: 0.8°
Axial tilt: 97.8°
Mean temperature: -195 °C
Surface pressure: no solid surface
Known moons: 28
Rings: yes
Global magnetic field: yes

Source of the figures: NASA Planetary Fact Sheet (public domain).

Discovery: 1781 – William Herschel

Description

Uranus was the first planet discovered with a telescope, found by William Herschel in 1781. Its axis is tipped over so far that the planet effectively rolls along its orbit, giving each pole decades of continuous daylight followed by decades of darkness. Methane in the upper atmosphere absorbs red light and gives it a cool cyan tint, while the interior is thought to be rich in water, ammonia and methane ices around a rocky core. It has a system of narrow dark rings, first detected in 1977 when they dimmed a background star, and moons mostly named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited it, flying past in 1986.

Moons

We describe 6 of the 28 known moons (count from the NASA Planetary Fact Sheet) – the largest and most interesting.

Missions

NASA · 1977Voyager 2flyby · active