URANUS
- Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun.
- Uranus is the farthest planet that can be seen without a telescope.
- Its average distance from the sun is about 1,784,860,000 miles (2,872,460,000 kilometers), a distance that takes light about 2 hours 40 minutes to travel.
- Its diameter at the equator is 31,763 miles (51,118 kilometers), over four times that of Earth.
- British astronomer William Herschel discovered it in 1781.
- Johann E. Bode, a German astronomer, named it Uranus after a sky god in Greek mythology.
- Most of our information about Uranus comes from the flight of the United States spacecraft Voyager 2.
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