Uranus & Moons

This is a montage of images taken by Voyager 2 showing Uranus and its five major moons. In order of size these are Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, Ariel and Miranda, – all named after characters from works by the famous authors Shakespeare and Pope. Miranda, the smallest of these five moons, has a giant canyon twelve times deeper than our Grand Canyon.The atmosphere on Uranus contains helium and hydrogen but also ammonia and methane and it is the latter that gives the planet its blue-green colour. It is the coldest planet in the solar system and the third largest.Uranus is the 7th planet from the Sun, was discovered by William Herschel in 1781 and is named after the Greek god of the sky.