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Uranus
(more details below)
Size & Distance
* Uranus has a diameter of 31,518 miles and is 4 times wider than Earth.
* From an average distance of 1.8 billion miles (2.9 billion kilometers) away from the Sun.
* It takes sunlight 2 hours and 40 minutes to travel from the Sun to Uranus.
Geology
* Uranus is one of two ice giants in the outer solar system (the other is Neptune). Most (80% or more) of the planet's mass is made up of a hot dense fluid of "icy" materials – water, methane, and ammonia – above a small rocky core.
* Near the core, it heats up to 9,000 degrees Fahrenheit (4,982 degrees Celsius).
* Uranus is slightly larger in diameter than its neighbour Neptune, yet smaller in mass. It is the second least dense planet; Saturn is the least dense of all.
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* Uranus gets its blue-green color from methane gas in the atmosphere. Sunlight passes through the atmosphere and is reflected back out by Uranus' cloud tops. Methane gas absorbs the red portion of the light, resulting in a blue-green color.
Atmosphere / Weather
* Uranus' atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, with a small amount of methane and traces of water and ammonia.
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* Uranus' planetary atmosphere, with a minimum temperature of 49K (-224.2 degrees Celsius) makes it even colder than Neptune in some places.
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* Wind speeds can reach up to 560 miles per hour. Winds are retrograde at the equator, blowing in the reverse direction of the planet’s rotation. But closer to the poles, winds shift to a prograde direction, flowing with Uranus' rotation.
Orbit & Rotation
* One day on Uranus takes about 17 hours (the time it takes for Uranus to rotate or spin once).
* Uranus makes a complete orbit around the Sun (a year in Uranian time) in about 84 Earth years (30,687 Earth days).
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* Uranus is the only planet whose equator is nearly at a right angle to its orbit, with a tilt of 97.77 degrees – possibly the result of a collision with an Earth-sized object long ago. This unique tilt causes the most extreme seasons in the solar system. For nearly a quarter of each Uranian year, the Sun shines directly over each pole, plunging the other half of the planet into a 21-year-long, dark winter.
* Uranus is also one of just two planets that rotate in the opposite direction than most of the planets (Venus is the other one), from east to west.