Uranius the Georgian

Organist William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus in 1781 with the first reflecting telescope that he built. It was the first identification of a planet since ancient times. He named it Georgium Sidium in honor of King George III of England. For many years the planet was known as the Georgian. It was not until 1850 that it was renamed Uranus in accordance with the tradition of naming planets for Roman gods.

The Uranian ring system was discovered in 1977 during observations from Earth. In prospective, the Italian astronomer Galileo Galileo saw Saturn’s rings first in 1610. Ranging from dust-sized particles to the size of mountains the existence of the rings consisting of billions of particles were confirmed in the 1980s by the interplanetary orbiter Cassini probe, named after Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini who discovered the gaps in the Saturn rings. The gaps are homes to two tiny Saturn moons called Encke and Keeler.

The interplanetary probe Voyager 1 found the planet Jupiter’s ring in 1974. Suspected since the 1980s, the probe Voyager 2 verified rings around the planet Neptune in 1989.

The order of the planets

All the planets rotate clockwise except one

The size of our sun in comparison to other stars

06/09/2011. Category: science. Tags: .

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