On March 13, 1781, the seventh planet in our solar system, Uranus, was discovered completely by accident. An amateur British-German astronomer named William Herschel had been looking through his ...

Therefore, when German-born British astronomer William Herschel spotted Uranus on March 13, 1781, and announced it as a new comet on April 26, he was far from the first to have laid eyes on that ...

Like Neptune, Uranus, discovered in 1781, is known as an "ice giant," in a slightly different category from Saturn and Jupiter. Both planets boast frigid atmospheres made up of ice rather than gas.

In 1781, pioneering astronomer William Herschel first spotted Uranus using one of his self-built telescopes, but he initially mistook it for a comet or star. He changed his mind, however, after ...

Uranus was the first of three planets in our solar system discovered thanks to the invention of the telescope. In March 1781 British astronomer Sir William Herschel spotted the glinting object in ...

Uranus is actually visible in the night sky with the naked eye as a very dim star, ... identified it as a planet in 1781. For millennia, astronomers only knew planets until Saturn.

But Uranus was different. ... The ice giant was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel in 1781, and finally recognized as a planet at that time.

Uranus has been the butt of a lot of jokes (stop giggling). And it doesn't help that it's huge — roughly four times the size of Earth — or gassy with an atmosphere comprised partly of methane.

Uranus wasn't ready for its closeup 38 years ago. I speak of the 7th planet from the Sun, and third largest in our solar system, which received a flyby — 50,000 miles above the planet — from ...