Brave new world of Uranus

Hey, this gaseous planet sure looks different! It even behaves different.

Here's Uranus rolling along like a bowling ball (97.77 degree tilt) in a nearly perfect orbit of the Sun, taking 84 years. 

At the same time, all of its 27 moons and 13 rings orbit around its tilted equator.

What else can the astro-physicists tells us about this blue-green beauty?                            

It’s cold of course (-215 degrees C), there’s a lot of hydrogen, helium and methane, it has gravity and a magnetic field, and takes only 17.2 hours to spin.

It wasn’t until 1948 that Gerard P. Kuiper discovered its moon ‘Miranda’, named after the beautiful daughter of Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan, in Shakespeare’s play ‘The Tempest’.  What did she have to say about her sweetheart? 
“O brave new world that hath such creatures in it.”

                                              

Well we didn’t know about this ‘new world’ until William Herschel was in his front garden on 13 March 1781, looking through his telescope at stars in the Gemini constellation.
By mistake he found the 7^th planet, Uranus, which turns out to be 19.18 times further from the Sun than Earth: very close to where Titius and Bode said it would be, 9 years earlier!

Uranus is unique but what an odd creature Miranda is –

·       partly smooth

·       partly rugged - canyons 80 km wide and 20km deep, cliffs at least 10 km high

·       partly ‘painted’ with a brush?

·       plus concentric grooves and even racetracks!

Why?  No-one knows, but it sure looks like my granny didn’t invent patchwork for her quilts – 

Someone else thought of it before her.

By the way, if you’re looking for Uranus today it is in the constellation of Pisces, in Australia’s north-western evening sky.

Acknowledgements:
wikipedia.com 
Spike Psarris, Our created Solar System, www.creationastronomy.com 
Photo credits: NASA / Erich Karkoschka, University of Arizona