The sideways ice giant. Drag the planet to spin it around, scroll to zoom in, and click a moon's name to learn about it.
Press “See inside Uranus” to cut the planet open and see that it is mainly made of water. The moons' distances are squeezed together so they fit on screen. Their sizes are enlarged 6× so you can see them — press “real size” to see how tiny they really are next to Uranus!
Uranus is a pale blue-green (cyan) colour. Its atmosphere is mostly hydrogen and helium, but it also contains a gas called methane.
When sunlight hits Uranus, the methane soaks up the red light. Only the blue and green light bounces back out into space — so that's the colour we see.
Uranus looks quite smooth and plain, with very faint cloud bands. Its thin, dark rings are hard to see.
Uranus is the 7th planet from the Sun. It sits between Saturn and Neptune, in the cold outer solar system.
Uranus is the 3rd biggest planet in our solar system — only Jupiter and Saturn are larger.
Uranus has 29 known moons. Most are tiny, but five are big and round. They are named after characters from the plays of William Shakespeare and poems by Alexander Pope. Below, the five big moons are lined up to scale next to Earth's Moon.
Uranus is tipped over by about 98°. Because of this, each pole gets about 42 years of sunlight followed by 42 years of darkness.
Even though Neptune is farther away, Uranus has the coldest air of any planet, dropping to about −224 °C.