The Planet
Uranus


The image on the right (Ref) shows the planet Uranus, the first planet discovered in modern times. It was found accidentally by William Herschel while he was searching the sky with a telescope in 1781. It had actually been seen many times before but dismissed as a star.

Uranus is largely hydrogen and helium, but (like Neptune) contains higher proportions of heavy elements than Jupiter or Saturn, and is covered with clouds. Our only direct spacecraft observation of Uranus came from Voyager 2 in 1986.