PLANET SEARCH
FUTURES:
Winner of Sir Arthur Clarke Award for 'Best Written
Presentation', 2005
Uranus
Into
the Depths
- Diameter: 31,763 miles/51,118 km
- Distance from Sun: 1,784 million miles/2,871 M km
- Length of Year: 84.1 Earth years
- Rotation: 17 hours 14 minutes
- Gravity (x Earth's): 0.9
- Axial Tilt: 97.9 degrees
- Average Temperature: -197C
| Unlike Saturn's brilliant, icy girdle, the rings of Uranus (discovered by Voyager) are quite dark and widely spaced. Here we are among the rocky particles. The blue-green gas giant, with its retinue of satellites, rotates at almost a right-angle to the plane of its orbit, so that it 'rolls' with first one, then another pole pointing towards the Sun at times. | ) |
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In 1968 my first full exhibition was held at the London Planetarium. One of the paintings, 'Methane Lake on Titania', was later bought by Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones (he actually bought two). Although there are no such lakes there, Titania does have long fault valleys! (For full story, see Hardyware) |
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One of the most spectacular discoveries of Voyager 2. Close to the south pole of Miranda, ice-cliffs rise up to 5km (3 miles) from the valley floor at an angle of 45-50 degrees. From Futures |
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