Welcome to Uranus!
You have reached stop #8 on Plymouth PTA’s Mission: Planet Exploration, a driving tour of the solar system designed to scale based on a 6-foot sun at Plymouth Elementary School! Click on Mission: Planet Exploration for more info, including maps to all 8 planets.
Image Credit: NASA
The Sideways Planet
Uranus is an ice giant (instead of a gas giant). Most of its mass is a hot, dense fluid of “icy” materials above a small rocky core. Its atmosphere is made of hydrogen and helium like Jupiter and Saturn, but it also has methane. The methane makes Uranus blue.
Like Venus, Uranus rotates east to west. However, Uranus is unique because it rotates on its side which makes for some interesting seasons. Uranus’ north pole experiences 21 years of nighttime in the winter, 21 years of daytime in the summer, and 42 years of day and night in the spring and fall. Can you imagine having seasons like that?
More kid-friendly facts about Mercury can be found at the NASA Science Space Place.
More in-depth information about Mercury can be found at NASA Science Solar System Exploration.