Ice Giant

Uranus.

An ice giant knocked onto its side, rolling around the Sun once every 84 years.

Uranus right now

From Earth right now: 2,799,221,829 km
Its light reaches us after: 2 h 36 min
From the Sun: 2,907,216,843 km
Speed around the Sun: 6.71 km/s
Around its orbit: 71% of the way from perihelion

Worked out in your browser from JPL's orbital elements, the same maths that moves the planets in the 3D viewer. How far Uranus is from Earth right now, with miles, AU and the next close approach. Uranus is next opposite the Sun, up all night and at its brightest, on 25 November 2026.

Overview

Uranus at a glance

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun, an ice giant tilted nearly 98° so it rolls along its orbit on its side. With a diameter of 50,724 km and an 84-Earth-year orbit, it is the third-largest planet by radius and has the coldest planetary atmosphere in the solar system, dipping to about −224 °C. Its pale blue-green colour comes from methane in the upper atmosphere absorbing red light.

Diameter: 50,724 km
From the Sun: 2.87B km
Year: 84 years
Axial tilt: 97.77°
Moons: 29
Type: Ice Giant

Size, to scale

Atmosphere

Pale and quiet

83% hydrogen, 15% helium, 2% methane. The methane is what gives Uranus its colour: it absorbs red wavelengths and reflects blue. Below the visible cloud deck of methane ice are cloud layers of hydrogen sulphide, ammonia hydrosulphide, and water.

Seen edge on, along the line between day and night.

Surface

No surface to stand on

No solid surface. Moving inward, the atmosphere thickens into a hot, dense fluid of water, methane, and ammonia. It is sometimes called an "ice mantle", though it is a supercritical fluid at thousands of degrees and millions of atmospheres of pressure.

A close pass, stopped where the surface map runs out of detail.

Interior

An icy interior

A small rocky core, a thick mantle of "icy" supercritical fluid (water, methane, ammonia), and a hydrogen / helium envelope. Unlike Jupiter or Saturn, Uranus radiates almost no excess heat, a long-standing puzzle.

Formation

How it formed

Likely formed closer to the Sun and migrated outward during the early solar system's gravitational reshuffling. The extreme tilt is best explained by one or more giant impacts during formation.

Orbit

Where Uranus is today

Average distance from the Sun: 2.87 billion km (19.2 AU). Orbital period 84 Earth years. Has 13 known faint rings, narrower and darker than Saturn's, made mostly of dark particles.

Sunlight takes

2 h 42 min

to reach Uranus, and its reflected light needs 2 h 36 min more to reach us.

Moons

Uranus's major moons

Missions

Who has been to look

1986Voyager 2Past flyby
The only spacecraft ever to visit Uranus. Every modern image of the planet still relies on that single 1986 flyby.
Proposed 2030sUranus Orbiter and ProbeConcept
The highest-priority new flagship mission in the 2023–2032 planetary science decadal survey, Origins, Worlds, and Life.

Go further

See it for yourself

Questions

Asked about Uranus

Why does Uranus rotate on its side?

Most likely a series of giant impacts during the early solar system tipped it over.

How many moons does Uranus have?

29 confirmed (JPL, October 2026). 27 of them are named after characters from Shakespeare and Alexander Pope, among them Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon; the two newest, S/2023 U1 and S/2025 U1, are still waiting for names.

How was Uranus discovered?

William Herschel found it in 1781. It was the first planet discovered with a telescope.

Compare and follow Uranus

Gas giants Guide

Other bodies

Sources & methodology

Numbers cross-referenced with the sources below; surface and atmosphere descriptions reflect findings as of October 2026. Renderings in the 3D viewer use textures based on Solar System Scope and NASA imagery.