Touch the Universe: A NASA Braille Book of Astronomy (2002)
Chapter: Uranus
Figure 5.
URANUS
Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun. It is about half the size of Saturn and orbits the sun at over nineteen times the distance between the Earth and sun. The planet completes one full orbit around the sun every eighty-four years.
Uranus is a “tipped” planet because its poles sometimes face directly toward the sun. Many astronomers believe that Uranus was tipped on its side when another object collided with it billions of years ago.
Uranus is not visible with the naked eye. Through a large telescope, the planet appears as a blue-green disk.
Figure 5 is an image of Uranus that was captured by E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona) using the HST in August 1998. A bright ring is visible and the planet appears to also have a few fainter rings. Blue and green colors indicate clear layers of the atmosphere. Yellow indicates reflective layers and orange/red colors are the highest layers of the atmosphere. The boundaries between the different colors are represented with raised lines across the planet. The brightest ring is shown with a dotted tactile line.
Based on observations of Uranus, astronomers believe that some clouds orbit this gas planet at speeds greater than 300 miles (480 kilometers) per hour!
