Uranus (mythology) castrated Uranus, from Uranus' blood, which splattered onto the earth, came the Erinyes (Furies), the Giants, and the Meliae. Also, according to the "Theogony", Cronus threw the severed genitals into the sea, around which "a white foam spread" and "grew" into the goddess Aphrodite, although according to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in the "Theogony", Uranus came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Hesiod named their first six sons and six daughters the Titans, the
Atmosphere of Uranus fact later interpreted by Norman Lockyer as indicating that Uranus emitted its own light as opposed to reflecting light from the Sun. In 1889 however, astronomers observed solar Fraunhofer lines in photographic ultraviolet spectra of the planet, proving once and for all that Uranus was shining by reflected light. The nature of the broad dark bands in its visible spectrum remained unknown until the fourth decade of the twentieth century. Although Uranus is presently largely blank in appearance, it has been historically shown to have occasional features, such as in March and April 1884, when astronomers Henri Joseph Perrotin, Norman