Exploration of Uranus cloud tops. This was the probe's first solo planetary flyby, since "Voyager 1" ended its tour of the outer planets at Saturn's moon Titan. Uranus is the third-largest planet in the Solar System. It orbits the Sun at a distance of about and completes one orbit every 84 years. The length of a day on Uranus as measured by "Voyager 2" is 17 hours and 14 minutes. Uranus is distinguished by the fact that it is tipped on its side. Its unusual position is thought to be the result of a collision with a planet-sized body early in the Solar
Atmosphere of Uranus diffuse dark band in the spectrum of Uranus at 827 nm, which he failed to identify. In 1952 Gerhard Herzberg, a future Nobel Prize winner, showed that this band was caused by the weak quadrupole absorption of molecular hydrogen, which thus became the second compound detected on Uranus. Until 1986 only two gases, methane and hydrogen, were known in the Uranian atmosphere. The far-infrared spectroscopic observation beginning from 1967 consistently showed the atmosphere of Uranus was in approximate thermal balance with incoming solar radiation (in other words, it radiated as much heat as it received from the Sun), and no