Atmosphere of Uranus at the solstice of 1986, when "Voyager 2" passed by the planet, they were concentrated near the sunlit pole, making it dark in ultraviolet light. The outermost layer of the Uranian atmosphere, extending for thousands of kilometres, is the thermosphere/exosphere, which has a uniform temperature of around 800 to 850 K. This is much higher than, for instance, the 420 K observed in the thermosphere of Saturn. The heat sources necessary to sustain such high temperatures are not understood, since neither solar FUV/EUV radiation nor auroral activity can provide the necessary energy. The weak cooling efficiency due to the depletion
History of astronomy system, although only fragmentary descriptions of his idea survive. Eratosthenes, using the angles of shadows created at widely separated regions, estimated the circumference of the Earth with great accuracy. Greek geometrical astronomy developed away from the model of concentric spheres to employ more complex models in which an eccentric circle would carry around a smaller circle, called an epicycle which in turn carried around a planet. The first such model is attributed to Apollonius of Perga and further developments in it were carried out in the 2nd century BC by Hipparchus of Nicea. Hipparchus made a number of other contributions,