The planet Uranus was shot with a C11 telescope at f/10 with 2,794 mm of focal length with a Canon T2i (550D) and 640x480 movie crop mode at 60fps at 1/60th second exposure at ISO 1600. At the time of this photo on September 9, 2011, the seeing was about a 4 out of 10, and Uranus had an apparent size of 3.7 arcseconds and shone at magnitude 5.7.

Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It was named after the Greek god of the sky and the father of Saturn.

Uranus was not one of the five classical planets (wandering stars) known to ancient peoples. Those were Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Because of its relative faintness, and slow movement against the background stars, Uranus was not discovered to be a planet until 1781. Uranus was discovered by William Herschel on March 31 of that year.

Like Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, Uranus is a gas giant. The really interesting thing about Uranus is that its axis of rotation is tipped over on its side 97.77 degrees.

It takes about 84.3 Earth years for Uranus to revolve around the Sun. It rotates once on its own axis every 17 hours, 14 minutes, and 24 seconds. Uranus has a diameter of 51,118 kilometers (31,762 miles).

Uranus orbits the Sun at an average distance about 2.875 billion kilometers (1.786 billion miles), 19 times farther than the Earth. It comes to opposition with the Earth every 369.7 days.

Uranus rings and inner moons, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). Credit NASA Planetary Photojournal.

Uranus's apparent diameter varies from 3.3 to 4.1 arcseconds, and it's apparent magnitude varies from 5.3 to 5.9. Uranus is bright enough to be seen with the unaided eye from a dark-sky observing site.

Uranus's atmosphere is made mostly of hydrogen and helium, but contains more water, ammonia and methane ice than Jupiter or Saturn. Because of the large amount of ice, Uranus is sometimes called an "ice giant."

Photographically in amateur equipment, Uranus is a small blue-green disk with no surface details as seen in the image at the top of the page shot with an 11-inch telescope. The color comes from the methane in Uranus's atmosphere. Some limb darkening can be seen. With the Hubble Space Telescope Uranus has some banding and storms that can be seen, although not to the extent of those present on Jupiter.

Like the other outer planets of Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune, Uranus has a ring system. It is too faint to be seen or photographed by amateur astrophotographic equipment however.

Uranus's Moons

Uranus also has a large number of moons - 27 to date. The five main ones are Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Oberon. Titania is the brightest at magnitude 14.1, and Miranda is the faintest at magnitude 16.7. Sky & Telescope's The Moons of Uranus Calculator will show their locations. Some of the others are Juliet, Puck, Cordelia, Ophelia, Bianca, Desdemona, Portia, Rosalind, Cressida and Belinda. Those are about 20th magnitude and fainter.

It is possible to photograph the brighter moons of Uranus with moderately-sized amateur equipment. The problem, again, is the great brightness difference between the planet at mag 5.3 to 5.9 and the brightest moons at magnitude 14.1 to 16.7. You will need a long exposure to record the moons, which will cause Neptune to overexpose. Compositing different exposures can compensate for this problem.

Tips for Photographing Uranus

• Unfortunately, Uranus is usually a mostly featureless cyan-colored disk. Resolving a disk is relatively simple Capturing any kind of detail is another story. First, the detail has to be present, and second, you need extremely good seeing, technique and a relatively large aperture to get anything.

• Uranus ranges in brightness from magnitude 5.3 to 5.9. This is relatively faint. At f/20 try an exposure of about 1/60th of a second at ISO 6400.