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Short answer

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest by diameter. It is a very cold, windy ice giant that rotates at nearly 90 degrees to its orbit, so it seems to spin on its side. [S1][S2]

Key points

• It has 13 faint rings and more than two dozen small moons. [S1][S2]
• It was the first planet found with a telescope, by William Herschel in 1781. [S1]
• Only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, has visited it. [S2]

Claims

• id: C1 claim: Uranus appears to spin sideways. source: S1 evidence: "Uranus appears to spin sideways."
• id: C2 claim: Uranus rotates at nearly 90 degrees from the plane of its orbit. source: S2 evidence: "It rotates at a nearly 90-degree angle from the plane of its orbit."
• id: C3 claim: Uranus was the first planet found with a telescope. source: S1 evidence: "Uranus was the first planet found with the aid of a telescope."
• id: C4 claim: Only one spacecraft has explored Uranus. source: S2 evidence: "Only one spacecraft has explored planet Uranus."

Sources

• [S1] Uranus: Facts. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/uranus/facts/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] Uranus. NASA. https://science.nasa.gov/uranus/ . License: US government work, public domain. Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_7agv3nan,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{Uranus basics: the sideways planet}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/uranus-basics/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:7agv3nan. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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