Talk:Uranus/Archive 1

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Contents

Picture

That picture is really crappy. It looks like it was made in photoshop. Is there another one you can put up there?

As you can gather from the picture's description, it is in fact highly "photoshopped". Also from the description it states that in NASA's opinion this is what Uranus would look "as human eyes would see it". If all artistic depictions are excluded this propably is the best picture of Uranus. - Laisak 00:20, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)

Uh, I thought Uranus had rings? Like Saturn but not as big. This picture just looks like a blue ball. Oh, here is a Hubbel Telescope pic of Uranus http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02963

You would not be able to see Uranus's rings with the naked eye, because they're thin and dark. That Hubble picture is in false colour, so it would be better to put it further down the page, not use it as the main picture. The Singing Badger 16:31, 31 August 2005 (UTC)
Also, because of the axial tilt, from Earth's view the rings form a target shape around the planet and do not cross the disk. The picture is cropped too close to show them, even if the resolution was high enough. CFLeon 22:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Pronunciation

I do not think it wise to change the English language because a few of your students may snicker during the Uranus lecture. Is there any way to pronounce the name of this planet, without feeling embarrassed? I saw your anus last night. Hmm. Maybe it's just a matter of maturity

Try "yer an us".
Yeah, put the stress on the first syllable not the second. I've heard people say it that way. -- Tim Starling 02:18 30 May 2003 (UTC)
Apart from the fact that the first syllable of that is 'urine', I think that really, we should put both pronunciations up there.
I have heard that many scientists, as well as me, (I am unfortunately, not a scientist) pronounce Uranus as YER-nus. This really seems to be the best way to say it without feeling dumb.--Apollo2011 20:29, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)
Never heard anyone pronounce it like that, astronomer or not. Is that just perhaps YOUR-a-nus without much emphasis on the 'a' syllable? I am an astronomer, I say your-AY-nus and I see not the slightest reason to feel dumb when saying it. Worldtraveller 21:19, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I pronounce it 'oo-RAN-us.' if anyone cares.

That's basically the Latin pronunciation (Uranus being the Latin form of a Greek word), probably the best way to avoid giggles when discussing the seventh planet from the Sun. That or your-annus, with a short a. Either is likely to be understood -- though the Latin pronunciation is more clearly an attempt not to be silly or perceived as such, or else the mark of a nerd -- not that that is a bad thing at all ;). Jeff Anonymous 05:01, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)
How about YOO-ran-us as if to say, "YOU were the one that ran us over? Drahcir my talk 21:36, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Whoever named this planet should've put a bit more thought into this.JesseG 19:33, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
The usual pronounication at the time did not lend itself to scatological jokes- which were not the first thing most people thought of. The pronounciation problem is more a comment upon OUR generation than a past one. CFLeon 02:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
Why is it that everyone always assumes their ancestors were stupid? Seriously, you think NO ONE ever noticed, ever, until just recently? Howdoesthiswo 21:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

"YOOR-a-nus" is listed as being the first pronounciation. Is this really how the majority pronounces it? I'm not sure we should be placing something first (i.e. advocating it) just because we're embarrassed about a homonym. — Asbestos | Talk 12:59, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm planning on swapping the order of pronunciations such that the more common "yər-AYN-us" is placed first (see [1], [2] or [3]). Does anyone think otherwise? — Asbestos | Talk 12:32, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
No, good idea I think. Worldtraveller 12:34, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Out of interest I think it was Patrick Moore who invented or popularised the alternative pronunciation.
Actually, I've heard that it's the other way around; Europeans always pronounced it "YOUR-in-us" and it didn't become an issue until Americans started with the stressed 'long a' in the early 1900s. The original Greek name is more "yoo-ah-NOOSE", with a very soft or even non-existant "y" sound at the beginning. CFLeon 01:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
No: The original Latin pronunciation would be "ooRAHnus" (it would be OOrunnus if the second syllable were short). The word is a latinized version of a Greek word which would be pronounced very similar. Pronouncing the letter "A" as "AY" (instead of the usual flat "AH") is a peculiarity of the English language ...
I think they say it more like you-rin-is or you-rin-us on 'sky at night' -hexhunter 26/10/06 17:00

OED

The OED has (ˈjʊərənəs, jʊˈreɪnəs), in that order. The Latin is Ūranus, so the regular pronunciation would be to have the stress on the first syllable. (The penult only gets stress when heavy - closed or with a long vowel.) As for why the irregular "your anus" pronunciation exists, I don't know - but the earliest quote in the OED uses the form uranius, which would be stressed on the ra. kwami 09:52, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Everyone's favorite "Schoolhouse Rock" skirted the issue by pronouncing it "yoo-RAH-nus" in "Interplanet Janet." Of course, I'd go for "Georgium Sideous" after our Commander-in-Chief.

Moons

Is there any (good) reason why, in the moons table, Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon are in bold? -- looxix 10:06 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)

Not sure. Gotta ask the person who put that in. --PY
I'd think it's because those are the five biggest, which were discovered by telescope before it started getting visits from probes. For instance, in my Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, dated 1988 (and not the most authoritative source for astronomical data, admittedly, which would explain why it doesn't include those a year or two after the Voyager visit), those are the only five moons listed for Uranus. -- John Owens 10:26 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)
make sense, thanks. -- looxix 11:03 Apr 7, 2003 (UTC)
I'm the one who bolded them when I created the table, so yeah, I can confirm that that's the reason. They're the big ones. Bryan

Data check

Revolution period 84y 3d 15.66h
Synodic period 369.7 days

Are those the right way round? 'Synodic period' is the 'year', and revolution period is the 'day', right? Surely the outer planets have a much longer year than Earth, not just a few more days -- Tarquin 18:06, 6 Feb 2004 (UTC)

The synodic period is the time that it takes for the object to reappear at the same spot in the sky, relative to the sun, as observed from Earth. This is the time that elapses between two successive conjunctions with the sun and is the object's apparent orbital period. The synodic period differs from the sidereal period since Earth itself revolves around the sun. Since Uranus is very distant from the sun and is moving very slowly compared to Earth, however, the synodic period is only slightly larger than one Earth year. "Revolution" is usually used to mean the planet's motion around the Sun, whereas "rotation" is usually used to mean its day (for Uranus, Rotation period is -17h 14m). Looks alright to me. Bryan 01:17, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

More on Pronounciation

re Pronunciation: I agree that Wikipedia is not a dictionary. But Wiktionary is a dictionary, and can go to great lengths to discuss the issue. It's about the word, while here is about the object. So, refer to Wiktionary with a brief note, if there is anything of interest about the word itself, such as the pronunciation or etymology or cultural variations. —Długosz

I disagree. First, I visited the Wiktionary entry, looking for the pronunciation, and all I saw was a bunch of unviewable characters, which is completely useless to me. Second, the pronunciation of hard-to-pronounce words is a perfectly valid fact for an encyclopedia article. Why make people go chasing a link when a few words here can be informative? The Wikipedia is not a dictionary policy is just to prevent skimpy articles that only consist of definitions. It doesn't forbid any pronunciation anywhere. I'll revert, but let's please discuss further and see what other people say. -- hike395 05:21, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
I agree with your disagreement, I think it's quite reasonable to have the pronunciation in here. It's not important in most articles, but Uranus is the butt of many jokes regarding this matter and so it's a very relevant piece of information here. Bryan 06:57, 4 May 2004 (UTC)
Apparently, this very pronunciation has been discussed on the WikiEN-l mailing list [4], where several people, including Jimbo, have come down in favor of keeping the pronunciation. Jimbo's posting says:
Timwi: Should Wikipedia articles, in their first paragraph, explain the pronunciation of the word that is the article title?
Jimbo: Doesn't it depend on the context? Some words are difficult to pronounce, or commonly mispronounced ("Uranus"), so that it's worthwhile to include it. Other words ("United States") are not difficult to pronounce and are not commonly mispronounced.
Jimbo: It'll be a judgment call in most cases, right?
Timwi: Also, what makes the pronunciation of Uranus more mention-worthy than that of, say, "planet"?
Jimbo: "Uranus" is commonly mispronounced, "planet" is not. That strikes me as being relevant to our editorial decisionmaking in cases like this.
I feel that Jimbo has summarized the argument for keeping the pronunciation extremely well (at least in this case where it is very relevant information). -- hike395 07:02, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Naming

The planet must surely be the primary meaning of "Uranus" – should we follow the lead of Mars and make this a primary disambig? violet/riga (t) 20:53, 3 May 2005 (UTC)

I agree that this should be the primary disambiguation. - Laisak 00:23, Jun 23, 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, actually it's an even split now. Uranus, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter are direct links to the planet pages, while Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Pluto are all disambiguation pages. I'm not counting Earth because it's exceptional. I think that we should be consistent, somehow. I'm fairly indifferent, but I guess I'm slightly leaning towards making the disambig's all primary. Should we maybe have a vote on Talk:Planet#Naming? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 21:54, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Editing [was: That Stupid Joke]

Should we have something about that joke? From User:68.38.113.242

This article is about a planet. For the anatomical subject see your anus
(NOTE: I'm kidding, there's no need to acknowledge the joke). --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 22:01, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, seems like we run a tight ship here. At any rate, newbie here who wants to add something to, not edit, "Uranus in Fiction," but apparently failed on my first attempt.

So then, how do i present the potential addition, and who to, and how do i find them??? Thanks to anybody who can help me in this matter. BTW, as an opener, Wayne Dyer wrote a science fiction book titled Gifts of Eykis about some folks from Uranus who had Stranger in a Strange land qualities and, i would like to share a very interesting experience i had when i wrote him with a question about same and received a fascinating response from him... Richard s.

You don't present potential additions to anyone, you just make them! Welcome to Wikipedia, it's crazy but it might just work!ZoFreX 07:22, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, is not someone going to prevent irresponsible anarchy? And if not, what makes Wikipedia safe from such incursions? Richard s

Other users, that's who. By the way, don't put spaces at the beginning of your paragraphs, it turns them into a weird font (don't ask why...). I fixed it for you. The Singing Badger 01:17, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
Plus a history of pages is saved, so vandalism can be quickly reverted. Btw, if you have a user typing 4 "~"'s (without quotes) will put your tag, like so: ZoFreX 20:58, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I added a line about it to the "Uranus in Fiction" section, near the first reference (which happened to be the "That Stupid Joke" in Futurama). I thought it was important, since not all readers may understand the reference, and it looked better than before the first item, or as a footnote, or collecting all "schoolboy humor" into a subsection. JohnWhitlock 19:59, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

North/South definition

The article mentions the two different definitions of which pole of Uranus is which, but it does not state which of these definitions is being used when it says that the south pole was pointing at the Sun in 1986. Anyone got any information on this? Chaos syndrome 11:33, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Last I heard, the definition of North was the pole which rotates counter-clockwise as seen from space. This gives Uranus slightly more than a 90 degree tile, and makes Venus rotate upside-down. CFLeon 01:38, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
Different sources sometimes seem to have conflicting definitions of North and South for planets with over 90 degree tilts, such as Venus, Uranus, and Pluto.
The "official" position endorsed by the IAU/IAG[5] is that the North pole of a planet or satelite is that the north pole is that pole of rotation which lies on the north side of the invariable plane of the solar system.
According to this definition, Uranus should be regarded as having an axial tilt of approx 82 degrees, and a retrograde rotation. The fact that Uranus's tilt is almost always stated as 98 degrees, however, perhaps gives the (logical) idea that its north pole is being defined as the pole which rotates counter-clockwise as seen from space, just is so with the Earth. Inconsistant definitions I know. At one time maps of the Moon's surface used a definition of East and West which differs from that for the Earth's surface - in the early 1960s, the definition of East and West on the Moon was altered.Roo60 21:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Asian cultures/mythology

I have doubts about the sentence on the "Sky King Star" and the link to a sailormoon site. This planet is not visible with the unaided eye, how can there be a mythology about it any culture?? This look bogus to me!! Awolf002 15:11, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, that was put in by User:WilliamKF, in some bizarre edits. This edit put in the reference, replacing the Kanji characters "天王星" that are supposed to be Chinese for Uranus, as well as deleted a link to a MSNBC story about the newly discovered rings. He's done something similar on the Saturn page, citing discussion on this talk page.
I'm going to restore the Kanji on both pages, put in the link as a simple [1] type of link. Being a game site it's not terribly reliable, but we can just assume it's not a cartoon version of the truth for now. It's quite possible those are the chinese names for these planets, but for Uranus out they're probably not ancient names. JamesHoadley 16:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
... and Neptune and Jupiter too. Edits are here, here, here and here. Now we have retained the Kanji, but have 4 links to a questionable reference, but not too bad. JamesHoadley 16:48, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
I (WilliamKF) just found a reference to Hamilton Amateur Astronomers which says
"Because knowledge of the outer planets came in comparatively recent times, the Chinese names for them are simply translations of the Roman ones. Thus Uranus is known as "sky king star" and Neptune as "sea king star". Even though the concept of Hades is not common to Asian cultures, Pluto's translation ("dark king star") is still quite apt."
[Reply to WilliamKF], OK, better references is good, although it's not a big point.
I see you've removed the Kanji, is it showing up as question marks in your browser? Basically all modern browsers should handle it fine. --JamesHoadley 23:52, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Yes in my Mozilla Firefox browser v1.0.7 it was not Kanji. WilliamKF
Yeah, now I know why you wanted to get rid of the Kanji. Can I just put it back in without getting into a revert war? I think it's pretty normal to have Kanji like that, and you'll encounter lots of other sites on the internet that show up characters (like european ones) as question marks. According to the History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite article you're browser is 3-4 years old now, so it shouldn't be problem for other people. JamesHoadley 21:07, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Okay, I upgraded from v1.0.7 firefox to v1.5 (the latest stable release) and I still get the ???s. I won't remove them (although they are presently gone) but I'd like to be able to see them. Anyone else getting them to show up okay in Firefox? WilliamKF 19:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)
That is weird, I thought you were talking about Mozilla (v1.0 is from 2002) not Firefox (v1.07 is only a few months old). The wikipedia code tells the browser to use the UTF-8 character set, so Firefox should be trying to display those characters. Either you've set it to always display in a different character set (like Western), you don't have any Unicode fonts installed, or something else weird. You should probably go to the help desk, Help:Contents is the place to start. --JamesHoadley 19:46, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
Ok, will do that, but I wonder what happens when someone edits the page who does not see the Kanji, do the characters get lost and replaced with question marks? If so, we should probably use a template to bring in the characters to avoid this issue. I'll edit the page now, can you check to see if the Kanji is retained? Thanks. WilliamKF 17:46, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure they get preserved. JamesHoadley 09:30, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
The Chinese characters are (or at least were) correct. The five visible planets were named after the five elements, and the European weekday names named after those planets were calqued using their associated elements. For example, Mars was the fire star (presumably for its color, the reason it was named for the god of war in the west), and Tuesday (Marsday) is therefore fire day in Japanese. Similar calquing (not translation) was done with the three modern planets: Each name is an encapsulated desciption of the deity the planet was named after.
And let's restore the kanji, shall we? It's rather useless to describe them in English words. (If you're worried about them not being correct, click on one of the Asian language article links to check.) kwami 19:55, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
I'm pretty sure I did. --JamesHoadley 23:52, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
Someone changed the literal translation from "Sky king star" (which is correct) to "Emperor star". Before changing it back, I checked the references to see if they had an explanation, but both cited articles translate it as "Sky king star". Any Kanji dictionary (I used Nelson's) confirms that 天 means "sky" or "heavens", 王 means "king", and 星 means "star". PopsHunsinger 20:22, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

Trojan/Centaur/Co orbital

Has the following object: 83982 2002 GO9 (Crantor) ever been confirmed to be the first Co-Orbital centaur for Uranus?

Pronouciation (one of the moons)

Isn't Titania supposed to be pronounced tie-tay-nia and not ti-taan-ya? Drahcir my talk 22:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

We had a long discussion about this on the Titania talk page. Short answer: we went with ti-taan-ya or tye-tan-ia because that is the Shakespearean pronunciation of the character's name. The pronunciation tye-tay-nia might be an influence of the pronunciation of the element titanium? (The effect goes the other way - one Shakespearean at least thought the element was pronounced ti-taan-ium !) kwami 02:56, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

The unsightly section 'Uranus in fiction'

This section has quite a lot of 'trivia', that is unverifiable. Can we agree on what should be in there and what not? Its current state is a bad mark on this article, IMO. Awolf002 15:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Re: The 'Uranus in Fiction' section. Is it REALLY necessary to include so many references that have nothing to do with the planet, but just repeat the joke? Another one for you: The Secret of the Ninth Planet, by Donald Wollheim has the Magellan land on one of the Uranian moons. I think it was Titania, but I'm going from memory here. CFLeon 22:56, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I'd like it to be moved out in its own article, Planet Uranus in fiction or some such, and just have a link to that article in the "See also" section here. Sort of sweeping it under the rug, or at least away from here. I don't want it removed completely, or even kept tight and short, as I think there is merit in having popular culture on this elaborated on somewhere. The fiction article could very well be a good one, with real prose (not just a list like the section is now) and have elaboration on, say, how the planet's role in fiction has evolved from the first sci-fi novel to mention it, potrayal of life on it and so on. Not uninteresting and unencyclopedic stuff at all, but not something we want to expand much on here. So I'd like the fiction part to be split out in its own article. Shanes 05:49, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

No, URANUS IN FICTION, NOT MINE geoff 12:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Inconsistent physical composition descriptions

The Physical Characteristics / Composition section states that "It appears that Uranus does not have a rocky core" and is composed of hydrogen, helium, and methane, but the Life on Uranus section claims it *does* have a rocky core plus water oceans. These two descriptions are in conflict. Also, the bit in the Life on Uranus section about pressure being a problem is an unsupported and (IMO) dubious assertion. Fasrad 01:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's nonsense. I deleted it. The Singing Badger 01:11, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I wonder why is it said that Uranus is a gas giant. Astronomers re-classified it as an ice giant instead, like Neptune.

Prediscovery observations

Is there interest in posting a list of the sightings before 1781? I have made such a list, although it's lacking in some detail (such as precise dates for some of the sightings), and can put it up. CFLeon 21:00, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

How long is that list? We already mention some of them, and if it's a long list we're probably better off with just stating the number and details on some of the more interesting ones. I guess there could be some sightings on your list that are disputed (I don't know), and in that case we should be carefull and not start doing stuff bordering original research. But if it's not too long, and the sightings are uncontroversial, I wouldn't mind mentioning them in full here. Shanes 06:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
As of 1982 (date of my primary source), there were about 25 known and I know of no others found since then (the last one found was in 1968). I have them sorted both by date of observation and date found; also a total by observer. No major controversies: two sources give different numbers by Lemonnier; the spelling of Lemonnier's name varies slighty depending on the source; and one of the astronomy magazines had an article about the hairbag story several years ago. CFLeon 21:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)
Since there hasn't been any objections to posting it, here's my list of prediscovery observations:

By date observed:

  • 1690 Dec 23- John Flamsteed; catalogued as 34 Tauri [J. E. Bode, 1785]
  • 1712 Apr 2- John Flamsteed [J. K. Burckhardt] [2 times in 1712?- 2nd may be typo for 1715]
  • 1714 - J. Flamsteed (perhaps actually F's ass, J. Crosthwaite) [D. Rawlins, 1968]
  • 1715 Mar 4- J. Flamsteed [Burckhardt]
  • 1715 Mar 5- J. Flamsteed [Burckhardt]
  • 1715 Mar 10- J. Flamsteed [Burckhardt]
  • 1715 Apr 29- J. Flamsteed [Burckhardt] [may be typo for 1712]
  • 1748 James Bradley [1864]
  • 1750 J. Bradley [1864]
  • 1750 Oct 14- Pierre Charles Lemonnier
  • 1750 Dec 3- P. C. Lemonnier
  • 1753 Dec 3- J. Bradley [F. W. Bessel, 1810]
  • 1756 Sep 26- Johann Tobias Mayer [Bode, 1781- 1st prediscovery found] Aquarius
  • 1764 Jan 15- P. C. Lemonnier
  • 1768 Dec 27- P. C. Lemonnier
  • 1768 Dec 30- P. C. Lemonnier
  • 1769 Jan 15- P. C. Lemonnier
  • 1769 Jan 16- P. C. Lemonnier
  • 1769 Jan 20-23- P. C. Lemonnier (4 consecutive nights)
  • 1771 Dec 18- P. C. Lemonnier

By date observation found:

  • 1781- J. E. Bode: 1756, Mayer
  • 1785 - Bode: 1690, Flamsteed
  • 1788- Pierre Charles Lemonnier found 9 of his observations; publishes only the 3 earliest (1764 & 1768 (2x));
  • 1810 (1813?)- F. W. Bessel: 1753, Bradley
  • (by 1820)- Burckhardt finds 2 by Flamsteed (1712, 1715 Apr 29)
  • 1818 (published)- Alexis Bouvard finds 3 new Lemonnier sightings; publishes ALL 12, claiming most (9) as his own findings, including the 4 on consecutive nights. [The dates given for Bouvard's work vary: Ley implies c 1808, the date of his first tables on Jupiter and Saturn: Rawlins says 1818; Grossner gives 1820. The 1820 date seems to be a confusion with that of B's updated tables.]
  • sometime after 1820- Burckhardt finds 3 more by Flamsteed in Mar, 1715
  • 1864-  ??  : 1748 & 1750, Bradley
  • 1968- D. Rawlins: 1714, Flamsteed

Running Total:

  • Lemonnier (or LeMonnier): 12
  • Flamsteed: 7
  • Bradley: 3
  • Meyer: 1
  • Total: 23

Sources:

  • Grossner, Morton; The Discovery of Neptune (1962)
  • Hoyt, William Graves; Planets X and Pluto (1980)
  • Ley, Wiley; Watchers of the Skies
  • Littmann, Mark; Planets Beyond (1988)
  • Rawlins, Dennis; "The Unslandering of Sloppy Pierre" Astronomy Sep, 1981, pgs 24-8 (discredits the hair bag story)
  • Standage, Tom: The Neptune File (2000)
  • Tombaugh, Clyde (with Patrick Moore); Out of Darkness: The Planet Pluto (1980)

-This probably should be in tabular form, but I don't know to put it that way. CFLeon 21:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up the list a bit and incorporated some newer information. CFLeon 00:40, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Name

What was it called while the british were calling it the Ge[o]rgian.

Most of the rest of Europe (and America) called it 'Herschel'. BTW, please sign your posts with 4 tildes (~). CFLeon 21:52, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
It actually was more complicated than that; France called it 'Herschel' for awhile, but Germany and most of the rest of Europe went with 'Uranus' almost as soon as it was proposed in 1782. It was 'Georgian' in Britain as late as 1850.CFLeon 01:00, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

GA Nomination - Issues

A couple of cites are require early in the article(discovery & naming). I have tagged them with [citation needed] . Gnangarra The Discovery and naming section also needs to be copy edited, under the current lay out the size of the paragraphs makes this part a hard slog to read. Suggest that the comment in brackets where it mentions Lemonnier's observations, be made a seperate para. With another break around Finally, Bode Gnangarra 04:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

in the section on physical characteristics, the use of it appears speculated probably disputed now non-existant all need to clarified and cited. I know that actually measured facts aren't available on the planet but this part of the article needs to show who is making the speculations, who's disputing them. Gnangarra 05:08, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

More issues for GA nomination :

  • The table needs ref.
  • This line : Uranus was the first planet to be discovered that was not known in ancient times, is in need of referencing
  • Lemonnier is often called careless or even "sloppy" for this, but it is important to know that he realized 9 of these within a short time of Herschel's discovery and most of his observations occurred at the stationary point in Uranus' orbit. is too pov by itself if not citing references.
That line's mine. I was actually trying to re-establish balance with comments made by other authors condeming Lemonnier for missing the planet and then throwing in his personality or the discredited hairbag story. My major reference is the Rawlins article given above. CFLeon 21:54, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
Shouldn't that line just be removed, unless someone can find a reference?Cromdog 22:54, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
  • ("a globe surmounted by your initial") : could it be explained in a bit more details or changed.
  • ...was readily adopted by French astronomers. : who were they
  • Prosperin, of Uppsala, proposed the names Astraea, Cybele, and Neptune (now borne by two asteroids and a planet), for what? Uranus or Neptune.
  • this pole as "south" is actually in some dispute between whom and whom?
  • odd orientation? Could this be more NPOV?
  • It is speculated that perhaps during the formation of the planet it collided with an enormous protoplanet, resulting in the skewed orientation. who said that?
  • Needs a thorough copyedit.
  • Needs more citations.

Thus failing the GA nom. Lincher 05:14, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Why no good photos were taken of this planet?

Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune all had nice photos taken of them by the man made satelites that flew past them. Why not Uranus? They all look pretty bad, and in false color I heard. Malamockq 13:33, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

The main picture at the top of the article is real color.. it just really did look that bland and boring when Voyager 2 went by. --Patteroast 15:35, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
What is annoying is that Hubble has identified more interesting cloud formations in the last decade, indicative of Uranian atmospheric conditions changing between when the planet is "pole-on" to the sun, and when it is half-and-half; the half-and-half seems to be the far more interesting, but Voyager 2 caught it during the lull time. -- 75.2.6.115 04:43, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

Two symbols?

Why are there 2 different symbols? Which one is more common? I seem to see both. Which one is more official?--Sonjaaa 22:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC) http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/multimedia/display.cfm?IM_ID=167

Death of a Moon?

According to the article at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/12/22/tech/main1159048.shtml : "Scientists also measured changes in the orbits of Uranus' inner moons since 1994. The new measurements suggest the moons are in a 'random and chaotic' fashion, said Jack Lissauer of the NASA Ames Research Center." Any truth to the theory/story? -- Kheider 20:35, 2 November 2006 (UTC) – consider this article to update on this http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2006/04/06_bluering.shtml

References

Title: URANUS Author(s): BERGSTRALH JT Source: REVIEWS OF GEOPHYSICS 25 (2): 251-259 MAR 1987 Try to get it!--Stone 16:54, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Infobox

There is a discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects#Planet_infobox_conventions_.28km_vs._AU_vs._miles.29 on standardizing the planet infoboxes, as well as the possibility of changing the planet diameter to radius. If you care about these things, let your opinion be heard there. Lunokhod 10:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)