It rolls round the Sun on its side. Uranus rolls round the Sun on its side, so each pole gets 42 years of daylight and then 42 years of night. Only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has ever been, in 1986.
Across
50,720 km
Surface
8,083 million km²
A day
17 h 14 min
A year
84 Earth years
From the Sun
2,867 million km
Gravity
0.89 × the Earth’s
Temperature
-195 °C
Moons
28
What you’re seeing
An illustration: when Voyager 2 flew past in 1986, Uranus looked like an almost featureless blue-green ball.
Named places
South pole: When Voyager 2 flew past in 1986, this pole pointed almost straight at the Sun: it was the middle of a 42-year southern summer.
North pole: Now it is the north pole’s turn: its summer peaks around 2030, and a bright cap of haze has grown over it as the sunlight came.