- Uranus cannot be seen from the Earth without a telescope.
- The seventh planet from the Sun, it was not known in ancient times, unlike the planets from Mercury to Saturn.
- William Herschel was born in Hanover, Germany. He moved to England in 1757 in order to follow a career as a musician but after buying a book on astronomy he became interested only in watching the sky.
- Most of the centre of Uranus is a frozen mass of ammonia and methane, which gives it the blue-green colour. The atmosphere also contains hydrogen and helium.
- Because Uranus is lying on its side as it orbits the sun, for nearly a quarter of its orbit one pole of the planet is in complete darkness.
- Uranus was the ancient Greek God of the heavens whose sons were the Giants and Titans.
- Uranus is the smallest of the four “giants”, but is still several times larger than the Earth. It has a diameter of 29297 miles, or 47, 150 kilometres, compared to the Earth’s diameter of just under 8000 miles, or 12,760 kilometres.