Essay by Blue8488Junior High, 9th gradeA+, February 2008

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Our planet Uranus. Uranus is the seventh planet of our solar system. Uranus is the mysterious blue planet that circles the sun, far from the Earth. A man named William Herschel first discovered this mysterious planet in 1781, he was a German musician living in England who had a great interest in Astronomy. He believed the sky held secrets he wanted to know. He couldn't afford to buy a big telescope, so he made his own. One night in March 1781, Herschel was studying constellations of Gemini. He spotted by accident a blue-green dot. He studied it for several nights and he realized that it was moving very slowly across the sky. Herschel believed that he found a new comet. As the word of his discovery spread, professional astronomers measured the distance to the object and decided it was too far away to be a comet. It must be a planet instead.

The new planet was twice as far from the sun as Saturn. This mysterious planet got its name from the tradition held. Like the six other planets, it was named for a god in Greek mythology. So it was named after the goddess that gives life. Because it orbited just beyond Saturn and was named Uranus for the god of the sky who furthered Saturn. Uranus is the third largest planet in our solar system. It is huge compared to Earth. Its diameter is 31,764 miles, which makes it about four times the size of Earth. Like all the other giant planets in out solar system, Uranus is made of a swirl of gases, liquids and solids. It has no solid surface to stand on. The solids are mostly silicon, iron, and basalt like rock. The center of Uranus is a solid core about the size of...