An Etymological Dictionary of Astronomy and Astrophysics
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A satellite of → Uranus discovered by Lassell in 1851. It is orbiting at a mean distance of 192,000 kilometers with a period of 2.52 days.

Ariel, a spirit in William Shakespeare's The Tempest.

One of the small satellites of → Uranus discovered from the Voyager 2 photographs taken during its encounter with the planet in 1986.

Named after the heroine in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.

The seventh planet from the Sun and the third largest, discovered by William Herschel in 1781. It has a diameter about 51,100 km, four times that of the Earth, and a mass 14.5 times Earth's mass. Uranus orbits the Sun at a distance over 19 times the Earth-Sun distance. Although it takes about 84 years for Uranus to make a revolution, it completes a fast rotation in only 17 and a half hours. Unlike the other planets, its axis of rotation lies mostly in the plane of the Solar System. Uranus is internally less active than the other giant planets, which added to its larger distance from the Sun, makes it colder. It has a dense atmosphere made of mostly molecular hydrogen (83 percent) and helium (15 percent), with two percent methane and traces of acetylene and other hydrocarbons. The planet's greenish-blue color is due to light scattering as in Earth's sky and the absorption of red light by its small amount of atmospheric methane. Uranus has a ring system and 27 known satellites.

L. Uranus, from Gk. Ouranos "heaven." In Gk. mythology he was the the primeval sky god, and responsible for both the sunshine and the rain. He was the son and husband of Gaia, the goddess of the Earth and the father of Titans.