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
Climate of Uranus equinoxes. A similar periodic variation, with maxima at the solstices, has been noted in microwave measurements of the deep troposphere begun in the 1960s. Stratospheric temperature measurements beginning in the 1970s also showed maximum values near 1986 solstice. The majority of this variability is believed to occur due to changes in the viewing geometry. Uranus is an oblate spheroid, which causes its visible area to become larger when viewed from the poles. This explains in part its brighter appearance at solstices. Uranus is also known to exhibit strong meridional variations in albedo (see above). For instance, the south polar region