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Uranus
Details
Uranus is an ice giant that rotates tipped over on its side, with its spin axis tilted by about 98 degrees. That extreme tilt makes its seasons unlike any other planet’s, leaving each pole pointed toward the Sun for decades at a time during its 84-year orbit.
Uranus matters because it makes the architecture of a planet feel strange again. It is an ice giant, but its most memorable trait is not simply its size, color, or distance from the Sun. It is the fact that the whole world is tilted by about 98 degrees, so Uranus moves through its orbit with its poles aimed sideways.
That tilt matters because it changes how sunlight lands on the planet. Uranus experiences seasons unlike those of any other major planet, with each pole spending decades pointed more toward or away from the Sun during its long orbit. That means Uranus is not just an ice giant with unusual statistics. It is a world where the basic pattern of illumination and season works differently from the one Earth makes feel normal.
That is why Uranus matters on this scale. It reminds you that giant planets are not one uniform category, and that the Solar System contains worlds whose most important difference is structural, not merely scenic. Uranus is important because it expands the idea of what a planet can look like as a rotating, orbiting physical system.
22,165km
Key facts
- Scale fact
- 50,724 kmdiameter
- Estimated age
- ~4.5 billion years
- Composition
- Hydrogen, helium, water-ammonia-methane ices
- Temperature
- ~76 K cloud tops
Scale context
Where Uranus sits on the full axis
By size on the journey, Uranus sits between Neptune and NGC 4395 Black Hole. The band below compares Uranus with nearby Ice giant planet objects so the size jump stays easy to read.
Together, these objects make the size change around Uranus easy to compare at a glance.
Sources
References for Uranus
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Uranus — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (NASA / JPL-Caltech, Public domain)
Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.
About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.