Uranus

the outermost but one of the major planets. It moves in an elliptical orbit. Its mean distance from the sun is nineteen times as great as that of the earth. The year of Uranus is eighty-four times as long as ours. The light and heat received from the sun is 1/370 of that received by us. The volume is estimated at from forty-seven to sixty-five times that of the earth; the mass is 14.6 times as great; the density is one-third as great as that of the earth. A body would weigh a trifle more on the surface of Uranus than on the earth. Uranus was the first planet to be "discovered." Others plainly visible were known to the ancients, but it remained for Sir John Herschel, looking through his seven-inch telescope, to discover, 1781, that Uranus was not a star. He thought at first that it was a comet. Uranus has four satellites or moons that have received the fairy names of Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. They have a diameter of perhaps 250 to 500 miles. They are so small and so distant they were not discovered until 1851.