Talk:Uranus/Archive 3

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Ice

"The ice mantle is not in fact composed of ice in the conventional sense, but of a hot and dense fluid consisting of water, ammonia and other volatiles.[11][57] This fluid, which has a high electrical conductivity, is sometimes called a water–ammonia ocean." If you can't walk on it, then why isn't it called a fluid or a water-ammonia ocean instead of ice? Maybe scientists understand it, but it confuses the rest of us. Ice#Other ices says: "The solid phases of several other volatile substances are also referred to as ices ...", not the "fluid" phases. 67.160.69.105 (talk) 15:45, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Ice as used in astronomy can mean any volatile chemical, such as water, ammonia, or carbon dioxide, not necessarily in solid form. Most of these "ices" exist in the form of supercritical fluids. --JorisvS (talk) 16:30, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Confusing description re: "Axial Tilt"

In the section titled "Axial Tilt," the article states that "Only a narrow strip around the equator experiences a rapid day–night cycle, but with the Sun very low over the horizon as in the Earth's polar regions" during Uranus' soltices. However, this seems confusing (if not inaccurate) because during Uranus' solstices the sun would appear confined to a point on the horizon *only* at DUE NORTH OR DUE SOUTH (depending on which solstice) without moving east-to-west and, instead, uniquely bobbing vertically up-and-down 8-degrees above the horizon (and below the horizon) on near-solstice days (i.e., "remains stationary at the horizon). In contrast, the sun at the Earth's polar regions always travels the full circumference of the horizon which, on Earth, is a continuous east-to-west travel no matter how high or low on the horizon (i.e., "travels the circumference of the horizon"). Accordingly, the comparison to the Earth's polar regions is misleading beyond the mere fact that the sun would remain relatively low on the horizon, whereas the current wording suggests a greater degree of similarity that ignores the very different and unique visual effect (which cannot be seen anywhere on Earth).

On a separate note, I think a whole article on the unique effects of Uranus' axial tilt would be welcome. How does the heating/cooling of the planetary surface work? How would life on Earth be different if we had a similar axial tilt? Do its moons rotate the planet in conjunction with its axial tilt of rotation or closer to the plane of its revolutionary around the sun? Because of its tilt, Uranus is one of the most unique and interesting planets in our solar system!

Thank you all for your outstanding work...

-Rick


2605:6000:62C0:BC00:889E:FDE9:6470:77D3 (talk) 04:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Note: Please supply the text you would like to insert in a "please change X to Y" format. Thanks for the compliment and the suggestions. Wikipedia is edited by people like yourself, so if you would like to see an article like that, find some sources which talk about the subject and summarize them into an article yourself. You will find lots of help with the details once you get started. Regards, Celestra (talk) 04:10, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Orbital period

I wonder if it's confusing that the orbital period is given in the infobox as 84.32 yr. Although strictly true, being stated that it's the osculating (instantaneous) value at the J2000 epoch, in fact the period averages out at 84.01 yr (see e.g. NASA Uranus Fact Sheet, currently reference 4). The text, on the other hand, correctly states "Uranus revolves around the Sun once every 84 Earth years" which both is true and seems a more useful statement. As an example, there is an instant just a few years after the J2000 epoch when the instantaneous period was (say) 83.8 yr, but this too is an unrepresentative value. The point is that Uranus will be back to where it was after 84.01 yr, not 84.32 yr or 83.8 yr. The same is true of other orbital parameters but I'd say it's fine for them to be specified for a given epoch (J2000). It just seems odd that the orbital period, whose instantaneous values change quite a bit within just a single orbital period, is quoted for an effectively arbitrary instant. Readers that happen to see the infobox and not the text may think 84.32 yr is the "true" (representative) value of the period, which it isn't -- David Asher (talk) 00:49, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

The period isn't really that bad. The eccentricity is. In this table are five sources. VSOP2013 is the newest in the VSOP series. VSOP87 is the most used (from Astronomical Algorithms ,by Meeus. The elements by Gaillot are probably a century old from Astronomical Formulæ for Calculators, by Meeus. The Horizons site is of course from this page. The 250 year best fit by Standish, the ultimate source of source on the NASA factsheet, comes next. The low Horizons eccentricity together with the a gives a perihelion distance never reached. 18.34 au, according to Solex, is the maximum within two millennia of present.
source period a e perihelion
VSOP2013 84.2514 19.2184 0.04638 18.3270
VSOP87 84.2515 19.2184 0.04638 18.3271
Gaillot 84.2494 19.2181 0.04632 18.3280
Horizons 84.3236 19.2294 0.04441 18.3755
Standish 84.0728 19.1913 0.04717 18.2861

Saros136 (talk) 17:59, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Without a source that gives all of the orbital elements for a given epoch (or average over a given time interval) the result will always just be an approximation since we are dealing with a n-body problem. Worse case I see for the Uranus Barycenter (around Sun body center) is epoch 2010-Oct-01 with PR= 3.090675052115868E+04 which divided by 365.25 days is 84.6 years. A good solution would be specify the Uranus Barycenter around the Solar System Barycenter (@0) which would be more accurate for any epoch since it would account for Jupiter. Using the Solar System Barycenter J2000 produces 84.01029 years (30684.76 days), which is very close to the NASA fact sheet at 84.011 years.. -- Kheider (talk) 00:59, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
Any method will be an approximation. The proper way to calculate sidereal period would be from mean orbital elements. I didn't do so above. For that, just calculate from the rate of change of the mean longitude with respect to the equinox fixed to J2000 at the instant J2000. I get 30,688.48 days from VSOP87. 84.02 Julian years. The fact and figures page probably uses some mean elements. It has 30,687.15 days, 1.3 days less than VSOP87. Good enough. Standish's bet fit gives 30,687.40 Any of these ways give 84.02 years. Saros136 (talk) 03:21, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
The solar system barycenter option has been disallowed. You can still get it via telenet and, I presume, email. It doesn't help withe the orbits of other planets. Saros136 (talk) 19:32, 3 August 2014 (UTC)
I received no error using the SSB barycenter "@0". Did you set "Ephemeris Type: Orbital Elements"? -- Kheider (talk) 21:29, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

addition to culture

I believe "your anus" joke should be added to the culture section, it is by far the most known dirty joke in english speaking realms, and it is our duty to allow others to beware of this.

thanks you.

71.17.109.113 (talk) 06:00, 16 April 2014 (UTC)

If you can source such a claim, then sure. Chaheel Riens (talk) 07:57, 16 April 2014 (UTC)
here is one emphasizing the pop culture of it: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/UranusIsShowing 71.17.109.113 (talk) 05:21, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
TVTropes is a wiki; we can't source other wikis. The "Your anus" joke was moved into a footnote from the main body of the text; I would not object to it being moved back, assuming consensus could be reached. Serendipodous 09:41, 25 April 2014 (UTC)
Well I would object. It's fine as a footnote - it's in the article but not given unnecessary prominence. This is an article about a planet, not childish jokes. andy (talk) 11:01, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

== Semi-prote

Numbers Don't Quite Match?

Hi. I just noticed that on the basis of the quoted semi-major axis, eccentricity and orbital period (in the infobox) the average orbital speed is very slightly lower than the figure we cite: 6.80km/s (to 2d.p.), rather than the 6.81km/s figure quoted. Comments? RomanSpa (talk) 10:08, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

Probably just a function of different epochs being used. At perihelion in 1966 Uranus was moving at 7.1 km/s wrt the Sun. As of 17 Sept 2014, Uranus is moving at 6.5 km/s wrt the Sun. -- Kheider (talk) 14:19, 17 September 2014 (UTC)
I'm not completely sure I understand your reasoning. All the figures in the infobox seem to refer to the same epoch (it's mentioned at the top), so I don't really see why there should be any inconsistency. The average orbital speed is a simple function of the orbit's semi-major axis, its eccentricity, and the orbital period (so long as your calculator gives elliptic integrals), so I don't quite see what you mean... RomanSpa (talk) 12:48, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Most of the infobox orbital numbers come from JPL Horizons using epoch J2000. But the "Average orbital speed" comes from the Uranus Fact Sheet, which is a different source. Actually checking the 2nd source the number is 6.80 km/s. -- Kheider (talk) 12:54, 18 September 2014 (UTC)
Cool. Thanks. RomanSpa (talk) 15:35, 20 September 2014 (UTC)

Spelling

Are we supposed to be in UK or US spelling here? At the moment we have both. --John (talk) 00:18, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

This 2001 revision is in British English, so I guess we should use British English, unless there was a special reason to change to US. --John (talk) 00:26, 18 January 2015 (UTC)
I have standardised on British English based on the above rationale. --John (talk) 10:53, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Lexell

Anders Johann Lexell wasn't Russian, but Finn-Swede who moved to St. Petersburg on king's permission. Please check the wikipedia article.Noseball (talk) 20:48, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Lead image

I disagree with the recent change of the lead image of Uranus (https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uranus&diff=644167146&oldid=644105109). The old image was taken in the vicinity of Uranus by Voyager 2, and is correspondingly a very high resolution photo. It is also very close to how Uranus would appear to the naked eye, providing an accurate depiction of the planet to the average wikipedia reader, who probably just wants to know what the planet looks like and doesn't know much about astronomical imaging. It is such a nice photo that it was POTD in March 2013. By contrast, the new image is much lower resolution. It is the only lead image of a planet on Wikipedia that is not in approximate visible light and true color. Furthermore, it is very similar to several other images already in this article. So, if there are no objections, I will shortly change the lead image back to the visible-light Voyager photograph. A2soup (talk) 00:22, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Seeing no objections, I have changed the lead image. Please discuss here before reverting. A2soup (talk) 05:34, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

FA status

Given the amount of easy copyediting I could just do (especially [1] and [2]), I question the correctness of FA status. I haven't gone through the whole article and even where I have it does not always flow as well as it should. --JorisvS (talk) 10:34, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

You could always copyedit it; it shouldn't take too long. I'm not a good editor of my own work, so it would be best if someone else did it. Serendipodous 11:17, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Only I think that my usual copyediting may not be enough. --JorisvS (talk) 11:40, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
OK, then submit it for FAR. Get some other people on it. And it would be cool if you could explain further what you mean. Serendipodous 12:23, 13 March 2015 (UTC)
Except the ease with which I could copyedit it, I currently can't. It's a general impression. I was/am hoping for some comments to clarify it. --JorisvS (talk) 12:41, 13 March 2015 (UTC)

Edit request, section Atmosphere/Composition: methane is not an element.

Since methane is not an element in the chemical sense, the following sentence is confusing: 

  The third-most-abundant element in Uranus's atmosphere is methane

Probably should be: 

  The third-most-abundant gas in Uranus's atmosphere is methane

Or: 

  The third-most-abundant component of Uranus's atmosphere is methane

--Ibarrac2 (talk) 13:13, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed, thanks for catching it. --JorisvS (talk) 13:18, 3 May 2015 (UTC)

cted edit request on 26 May 2015 ==

The text states "Uranus is the only planet whose name is derived from a figure from Greek mythology rather than Roman mythology...". Yet neither is Earth. I believe a correction is in order.

99.93.13.190 (talk) 03:08, 26 May 2015 (UTC)

"Earth" isn't from Roman mythology. Stickee (talk) 01:43, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
The point is that the version as is suggests that Earth is from Roman mythology. Simply writing "Uranus is the only planet whose name is derived from a figure from Greek mythology" wouldn't suggest that. --JorisvS (talk) 07:39, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Correct. I would suggest simply "Uranus is the only planet whose name is derived from a figure in Greek mythology." The rest are either Roman, or, in the case of Earth, German. The current sentence as structured seems to ignore Earth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.93.13.190 (talk) 04:23, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, mentioning Roman mythology is unnecessary, so this point can be avoided by not mentioning it. This was already done in the body of the text, but apparently the same sentence exists in the lead, where it was not yet changed, until my edit just now. --JorisvS (talk) 09:16, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Pun

I am surprised that there is no reference to the popular pun in English on the name "uranus", which makes it sound like "your anus". This should be added under the 'name' section or the 'in culture' section. I believe there are substantial cross-references that can be provided with this. And just as reminder, wikipedia is uncensored (in case that has been the reason that it did not make it to the article). - Subh83 (talk | contribs) 17:44, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Agree, it is a glaring omission. The page is already semiprotected, so vandalism to that part might not be as much of a problem as one might expect. I would avoid adding it until you can find a really good citation, though. A2soup (talk) 17:53, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
It was moved to a footnote. Serendipodous 18:13, 17 June 2015 (UTC)
I agree as well. The conspiracy amoungst the scientific community to pronounce it with the stress on the "your" rather than as "your anus" is a real thing. --81.102.247.247 (talk) 20:44, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Discovery

There is evidence of a much earlier discovery of Uranus, as evidenced by its 84 year orbit, which is referenced as 7 times Jupiter's Orbit. Uranus's 84 year period is also alluded to in several calendars, as well as Astrological calendars that break out the Zodiac. Uranus is also indirectly referenced in a few metonic cycle calendars, and a few of the earlier attempts at calculating Axial precession. So this should be updated to reflect that Uranus was in all likelyhood known in Antiquity, and incorporated into the 360 degree Zodiac as '7 times older than Jupiter'. While faint, Uranus is visible to the unaided eye, so it is inconceivable that ancient astronomers who paid such close attention to other stars, would have missed it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jjkell (talk • contribs) 15:20, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia needs reliable sources to back up claims, most especially such strong ones. --JorisvS (talk) 10:23, 8 September 2015 (UTC)

Edit request

The link for "long a" in the name section is broken. It should lead to Vowel_length#Traditional_long_and_short_vowels_in_English_orthography. However for accuracy IMO the whole thing should preferably be reworded to remove the confusing and inaccurate "long a" terminology and instead refer to the sound as a diphthong. --2.125.24.55 (talk) 19:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

 Done Ruslik_Zero 20:27, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Bad Reference

The reference 128 does not mention Uranus once (Used in the Exploration section) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Teddyinahat (talk • contribs) 18:43, 27 July 2016 (UTC)

Different infobox image?

Should we use the 2005 image from later in the page, instead of the flat featureless disc we currently use? I think it would more accurately represent Uranus. --Sir Cumference π 02:00, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

What is wrong with the present image? Isn't that what Uranus looks like in visible light? Hasn't this been discussed before? Isambard Kingdom (talk) 02:42, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
The 2005 image clearly shows what Uranus looks like in visible light. It is also far more recent and shows Uranus' key features, like its rings. Sir Cumference π 03:42, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
This subject has been discussed a lot. Please see all of the archives for this talk page. Thank you. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 18:23, 10 August 2016 (UTC)

Synodic period

Clicking on Synodic period in the right-hand column takes you to Orbital period. There is something very odd about the figures quoted, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.97.124.230 (talk) 10:29, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Uranus NOT the only planet name after a Greek God.

Your statement, "Uranus is the only planet whose name is derived from a figure from Greek mythology, from the Latinized version of the Greek god of the sky ..." is incorrect.

The Greeks were the first in the "Modern" world to name the planets out to Saturn. We use the names the Romans gave to the same deities when they usurped the Greek religion.

Will you PLEASE fix this inaccuracy. It is highly misleading.

Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:3649:690:60D0:C224:C398:24F6 (talk) 15:14, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

What it means is: "Out of all the current English planet names, Uranus is the only one derived from Greek." I think that meaning is pretty clear, and also an accurate statement. The history of Roman and Greek religion is irrelevant here. A2soup (talk)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 September 2016

106.77.7.111 (talk) 08:57, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Not done: as you have not requested a change.
If you want to suggest a change, please request this in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ".
Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 09:06, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Archiving

I notice the archive pages here have been comprehensively altered, moved around, and (as far as I can tell) had a lot of stuff simply deleted; all without any explanation or discussion that I can find: Which I thought was contrary to our guidelines on the subject.
So what's going on? Would someone care to post an explanation, as the alternative, reverting all the changes and getting the archives 5&6 un-deleted, would be a drag and a half.
Part of the reason I was looking there at all was for a discussion, about this time last year, which had the suggestion that the article was trying to re-write history on the pronunciation issue. Ironically, it vanished in March with a load of other stuff with the summary “archived to 201”; is that code for “deleted”? Moonraker12 (talk) 15:54, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Not sure what's up but it starts here [3] with Moonraker12 starting a discussion on an archive page, then Davidiad made an edit using AWB, not sure why AWB should be editing an archive page, then Serendipodous blanked the page. - Mlpearc (open channel) 20:31, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
My goal with the archiving was to condense the info into fewer pages, to keep them in line with the established ~100k standard. Many of these archives were started by me years ago before I had an understanding of how they worked, and were of varying, random length. All the information should still be there in the first two archives. I just can't figure out how to get rid of archives 3 and 4. Serendipodous 20:35, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Serendipodous Well, you moved this thread out of sequence. - Mlpearc (open channel) 20:44, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
You mean, this one? I moved it to the bottom, where all new talk threads go. Serendipodous 20:50, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
@Serendipodous: Yes I mean this one, all other threads were made by the same user, this was the first thread, check the time stamps. - Mlpearc (open channel) 20:57, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Maybe something should be posted at WP:AN pointing here, for someone good with lost content and page histories. - Mlpearc (open channel) 21:10, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
I've come here from there. Everything seems fine,on a cursory check. I've deleted archive 4; it looks like archive 3 contains the most recent discussions. Graham87 05:46, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

<od>Apologies, gents - I thought I had been clear what the problem was, but apparently not...So, to re-cap:

  • Archive 1 was edited in March 2016; three lots of stuff were added, with no explanation of what they were, where they were from, or why this was being done.
  • Archive 2 (same period) had 23Kb of stuff deleted, then eight further edits, some adding, some deleting, with no explanation for any of them.
  • Archive 3 had 28Kb deleted and five lots of stuff added, again with no explanation.
  • Archive 4 (which, I notice, has just disappeared!) was blanked, with (AFAIR) the edit summary “blanked the page”; no explanation why, or where all the content had gone.
  • Archives 5 and 6 have been deleted, with their edit histories, so my guess is as good as anyone's what happened there.

As archives are not supposed to be edited once stuff is added, and as cut-and-paste moves are highly undesirable, and as any page moves/blanking should at least be replaced with a redirect to where the stuff has gone, if the intent was to “condense the info into fewer pages”, Serendipodous, then it would have been wise, seeing as you were ignoring all rules, to at least mention the matter, giving your reasons, and allowing some room for an alternate view; and to leave explanations for each edit/content move/deletion. As for being unable to figure out how to get rid of archives 3 and 4, the short answer is DON'T; even if the page isn't wanted, its edit history will be, to preserve the audit trail. I should also point out that when I moved the stuff from Archive 4 (in 2009!) I was new to the game as well, but I at least left an explanation on the archive page, and posted another on the main talk page, for anyone to comment (and, as far as I remember, on the new Archive 6 page as well). In this case, nothing!
Mlpearc: Just to be clear, (the issue I raised with you was not my “starting a discussion on an archive page” at all; my issue was with the 14Kb of stuff I put in archive 6 (in 2009!), and which then vanished from sight, leading to the page being deleted (which you then told me about); and the edit you linked (above) was merely my evidence of the stuff in question. The note I left in Archive 4 was an explanation for my content move, not a discussion on the subject (that, I posted on the main page here, sometime in 2009)
Either: The reason why I've raised this (as I have already said) was that I was looking for a discussion from last year, which was “archived to 201” and is now missing. So it would be good to have a transparent audit trail, wouldn't it, to avoid any suspicion of covering tracks, if all this content-shuffling is above board? The simplest remedy would be to add an explanatory section to each archive page, with links to where stuff has gone; the alternative, as I've said, is a lot more messy. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:22, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

@Moonraker12: I specialise in dealing with talk page archives on Wikipedia, and even *I* can't find anything wrong with what Serendipodous has done. In fact, several years ago I advised this user about better archiving practices, and audited all their archiving until then. The notice on the archive template about not editing the archive is just an advisory; to me archive consolidation falls squarely under ignore all rules and I've done it several times without incident. The guideline against cut-and-paste moves is irrelevant here because archives are most commonly made by cutting and pasting text anyway, and all of the history is in the main talk page. As for the text you were looking for above, it's at the end of archive 2. Per your request on my talk page, I have undeleted archive 4 but have moved it to Talk:Uranus/Archive 4/Temp so it doesn't appear in the automated archive box. Graham87 01:54, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
@Graham87:: So, it seems I am banging my head against a brick wall on this, then. It also seems that I was wasting my time (and everyone else's) by assiduously documenting any changes I made, if it is OK to comprehensively shuffle the contents without a word of explanation anywhere. You said you couldn't find anything wrong, which is part of my point; it is going to be a job-and-a-half trawling through 10 years worth of edit histories to follow what has been done here if there is no obligation to explain it, and it wouldn't be any easier with half the archive histories gone. On which note, thank you for restoring the Archive 4 history: And thank you for finding the discussion I mentioned; I hadn't thought of looking in the 2008-13 archive for a 2015 dialogue. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:56, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Pronunciation

On the subject of correct pronunciation, and “humorous comments” if we are going to refer people to a footnote on the planet's unfortunate/embarrassing homonyms, we need to do better than the fatuous podcast that is there at the moment, which manages to be both patronizing and inaccurate at the same time.
Contrary to Dr. Gay's opinion, there are not two wrong pronunciations “your anus” (obligatory snigger) and urinous” (tortured, and inaccurate, definition added) and one correct one, “urunous”: And the best advice isn't to “say the correct one and run away, quickly”.
Uranus has two common pronunciations: “yuh-runus” (preferred by astronomers and newscasters) and “yoo-rain-us” (used by, probably, everyone else); both of them have unfortunate homonyms, “urinous” for the former (which, the good doctor might be surprised to learn, is a real word) and “yer anus” for the latter. (“your anus”, incidentally, isn't even a homophone, just a cheap joke: so putting it in the footnote at all makes little sense).
But as English (unlike many other languages)  doesn't have a single way of pronunciation (either, either, tomato, tomato; I take it you already know this) and or a single pattern of stress (Romanov, Romanov, controversy, controversy; which is why English is so hard to learn ), there are any number of pronunciations, none of them “incorrect”.
Another bug-bear is that the Name section is still suggesting that the astronomer/Carl Sagan  pronunciation is somehow more authentic by referring to the stress being “as in Latin Ūranus, “: If you are going to make a big deal about strict Latin, then you can't limit it to the stress pattern only; and you know as well as I do that the “Yoo/Yuh” sound for the letter “U” is a feature of English, not Latin ((something to do with the Great Vowel Movement I expect).
So what we have here is an English word with a Latin stress pattern, (or maybe a Latin word with an Engish-version-of-Latin pronunciation)  which is about as sensible as insisting the element be named “Yuh-runyum”: a strict Latin pronunciation would be more like “OO-rah-nus”.
Which co-incidentally (or not) is closer to the way the planets name is pronounced in the rest of Europe ()  particularly in German; as the planet was named by Bode, maybe the correct pronunciation is the German, “oorahnoos”. It is certainly closer to the IPA pronunciation of the word (/ˈuːrɑːnʊs/), and  is a lot more logical than the tortured arrangements (/ˈjʊərənəs/, and /jʊˈreɪnəs/ ) that we have in English.
So I suggest we lose the podcast (if you want a source for the conclusion “either is correct”, try the OED,  or Merriam-Webster), lose the reference to Latin,  and lose the footnote as it is; if you want to mention the problematic nature of the pronunciation at all, we should emphasize it is a purely English problem (maybe refer to the way other people say it) and put the literal IPA of the word in somewhere. Moonraker12 (talk) 15:57, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

PS: If you want a contemporary media link on the subject, you could try this explanation, and these examples, from CGP Grey: These are probably dismissable for not being reliable sources, but (unless your Pamela's doctorate is in linguistics) neither is the current podcast; and the ones I've linked to at least have the advantage of being factually accurate. Moonraker12 (talk) 16:01, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Pamela Gay does not say that any is "correct"; she just says that is the one that is least likely to embarrass you. The article says both pronunciations are acceptable. The article is not was never intended to be prescriptive. Serendipodous 21:02, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
The podcast certainly implies that her pronunciation is correct; and the claim that her version is least likely to embarrass is debatable. (see transcript:
“The safest way... is to say Uranus” (ie YUH-runus; the text implies the pronunciation used is correct) and
“If you really want to be formally educated about it, from the Latin it’s Uranus… but over a couple of hundred years, ur-ANUS has become perfectly acceptable” (plain wrong; YUH-runus isn't Latin, at least not classical Latin: and the claim, that YUH-runus has some formal authenticity, while YOO-ray-nus (not ur-ANUS, as she puts it) is some johnny-come-lately version of the name, is highly debatable) while
“just say “Uranusâ€?” (ie YUH-runus, again, begging the question) “and run quickly” is fatuous advice; there are better ways to handle this than running away quickly.)
All of which still ignores the other criticisms made; that the podcast is un-necessary as well as misleading, and does not qualify as a reliable source (the OED and/or MW support the “both are correct” claim more convincingly) and if a footnote is required for the homonyms, something like this would be better.
And the article doesn't need to be prescriptive, it just needs to tell the truth: The claim to authenticity (the reference to the stress being “as Latin”, and reiterated in your podcast) is stretching things, and there's no mention of the actual pronunciation of the Latin "Ūranus" (ie. /ˈuːrɑːnʊs/), or of the German (/ˈʊrɑːnʊs/) , or of the literal IPA (/ˈuːrɑːnʊs/), all of which are relevant to the question of pronunciation. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:31, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

It's a frigging JOKE. It was included as a reliable source to mention the pun so it wouldn't keep getting added here. It's in a footnote, it's not in the main text. Even ignoring all that, the only place it "implies" "correctness" is in your own head. Serendipodous 10:36, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

So it's a joke, now? I seem to remember reading something about humorous comments on the pronunciation being inappropriate content, so unless you have something else to justify the thing, it's on thin ice. And what objection do you have for/to adding the Latin and German IPA? You haven't mentioned that. Moonraker12 (talk) 23:00, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
On the talk page. Humorous comments on the talk page. Quoting other people's jokes in the main page is perfectly fine. Seriously dude, why are you so obsessed about this? Serendipodous 23:27, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
Because it is incorrect. Why are you so intent on keeping wrong information? And humour still has to be truthful, neutral, and from a reliable source, doesn't it? Moonraker12 (talk) 23:26, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
Anal retentive: a person who pays such attention to detail that it becomes an obsession and may be an annoyance to others. Are you done, Moonraker? Please? -BatteryIncluded (talk) 23:58, 30 October 2016 (UTC)
That's a curious allegation considering we are building an encyclopaedia here; do we have some kind of Goldilocks principle on accuracy now? And I haven't seen anyone tell me I am wrong about this, only that "it's all just a joke" (the Bernard Manning Defence) and that it's a bit of a nuisance to you me bringing it up. The price for trying to be rational in the face of a fixed idea, maybe? Moonraker12 (talk) 23:40, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
Have you considered the possibility that you might be wrong? That maybe the things you call inaccuracies are only inaccuracies in your own head? That none of the edits you complain about are actually stating anything about "correctness"? That maybe all she's saying is that it's the pronunciation to use if you don't want to be laughed at? Serendipodous 08:53, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
Serendipodous: It's always a possibility, but I haven't seen anything from you so far that would convince me of that. How about you? Are you ever wrong about anything? Moonraker12 (talk) 23:37, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

How does the namer being German imply that we have to use the German pronunciation when the word has been absorbed into English? How does the word being originally Latin imply that we have to use a Latin-like pronunciation? That's not how it works. The pronunciation is simply determined by how English speakers tend to pronounce it. Pamela Gay is simply saying that it is advisable in some circumstances not to use pronunciations that call to mind the word "anus". That does not mean that such pronunciations are in any way more correct. Double sharp (talk) 09:16, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Double sharp: I didn't say we should use the German pronunciation, or the Latin (though it would solve a few problems if we did) I said we ought to put them in the article for completeness.
As for the podcast, are you saying that astronomers don't think their pronunciation is correct? That they chose it out of the blue merely because it didn't call to mind the word anus? That they don't (or at least PG doesn't) think their(her) pronunciation is more “formally educated” form, or that the other common pronunciation is something recent, which has “become acceptable” over “a couple of hundred years”? And that isn't re-writing history on the subject? Moonraker12 (talk) 23:42, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
PS: To try and breakout of this row, I am restating my proposed changes, below (here) perhaps you can say what exactly you object to about them, and we can go from there. Moonraker12 (talk) 23:56, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Humour warning

Also, If we are going to have a warning at the top of this page about “humorous comments” being inappropriate, it will need something more reliable than a TV Tropes page to back it up.
For one thing, the original Greek  isn't OUR-an-os, it's OO-ran-os (|see wiktionary entry); the homophone to YOO-ruh-nus isn't “urine-us”, it's urinous, (see above) and stating “it is pronounced...” somewhat begs the question, doesn't it?.
The usual way of dealing with repeated suggestions, objections, or questions, is to have a FAQ box, or dump page, and to refer/move such comments to there; see Talk:Danzig, Talk:Derry, and Talk:War of 1812 for examples. Moonraker12 (talk) 16:06, 24 October 2016 (UTC)

Where does it say "is pronounced"? Serendipodous 21:03, 24 October 2016 (UTC)
Here, where it it says categorically “it is pronounced YOO-ran-us”. Moonraker12 (talk) 22:34, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
Again, it's a joke. Seriously dude you have a serious sense of humour deficiency. Serendipodous 15:40, 27 October 2016 (UTC)
So you are backing up a prohibition against humorous comments with a joke? Now that is a joke... (Seriously) Moonraker12 (talk) 23:01, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
I did not add that, but regardless, it was simply saying we all know the joke, so don't bother mentioning it. Serendipodous 23:25, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
If that is what it is simply saying, maybe it'd be better to simply say that...Moonraker12 (talk) 23:41, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
It does say that. You just aren't paying attention. And I don't intend to redraft the article so that it conforms to the whims of one whiny editor. Serendipodous 08:54, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

<od>:I know what it says; I was objecting to the linked webpage, which says something else again.

And I haven't asked you to redraft the article ( I wasn't aware it was your article to redraft) I was proposing to make a couple of additions in one section (ie. Name) and to re-write/delete a footnote. I had thought that doing so boldly, then getting reverted and having a confrontational discussion here would be the wrong way to do things, so I opened a discussion first. Obviously that was the wrong thing to do... Moonraker12 (talk) 23:45, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
PS: To try and breakout of this row, I am restating my proposed changes, below (here) perhaps you can say what exactly you object to about them, and we can go from there. Moonraker12 (talk) 23:56, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Edit proposal

I am restating the changes I've proposed; please say what exactly is so objectionable about them.

  • 1) add the IPA to the Latin Ūranus (we have a link for the Greek, but not the Latin; if the name is based on the Latin it seems an oversight)
  • 2) add the German IPA to the sentence about Bode's proposal (It'd be a good idea to say what Bode thought he was calling the planet)
  • 3) re-write/delete the exiting footnote; and remove the podcast as it fails RS, NPOV. (if the purpose is to illustrate the embarrassing homonyms it'd be better to day clearly what they are; if the purpose is merely to make a joke there are better ways to do it). Moonraker12 (talk) 23:52, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
It's been over a fortnight since I asked about this, and there has been no reply. I take it, then, that there are in fact no objections to these edits I am proposing. Just to be clear... Moonraker12 (talk) 23:35, 22 November 2016 (UTC)
Uh, no. That's not how things work. Unless there's a consensus, you can't make your changes. Serendipodous 11:29, 23 November 2016 (UTC)
Well, last time I looked the guidelines reflect community consensus, so edits backed by guidelines are already within the consensus; unless there is a guideline-backed objection.
Or if we went through the BRD route a revert would have to be based on something more than just not liking it.
So, what are the objections? Moonraker12 (talk) 00:43, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
The objection is that you're wrong about the podcast. It's not violating NPOV, because it's not making any claims about what is or is not "correct". It's just saying that are some circumstances, such as talking in front of a bunch of schoolchildren, that it might be advisable not to use the "your anus" pronunciation, if you don't want to be made fun of. And it doesn't violate RS, because Pamela Gay is a published professor of astronomy and noted science communicator. Also, if you actually listen to the rest of the podcast, both the speakers make clear that both pronunciations are fine. The first two, fine by me. Serendipodous 09:04, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
Serendipodous: Thank you, then, for giving a clear account of your objection.
First, though, I also proposed to put in links to the Latin and (probably) German pronunciations. You haven't mentioned them; do I take it you have no objection on that score?
Second: I don't doubt Pamela Gay's credentials as an astronomer, but my issue is that she was making comments on pronunciation and language; she isn't a linguist, so her comments are no more reliable there than any other lay person. And as most of them were factually incorrect, she is rather less reliable than the average person on the matter. Also, as an astronomer she has a particular view of the matter (the article is clear on the form astronomers prefer) and in the podcast presents the issue in a manner skewed to her own preference. It isn't even good advice about what to say to schoolkids; the CGP Grey video has a much better approach there. It's also better quality, more entertaining, factually correct, and more relevant to the subject (ie. how to pronounce Uranus) than Dr Gay's piece, so what is so essential about keeping hers? Moonraker12 (talk) 02:23, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

As I said, adding the Latin IPA pronunciation is fine, though we shouldn't try to second guess how a particular German guy 200 years ago would have pronounced a word. Germany wasn't even a country then. As for your other point, Pamela Gay is not making a linguistic point. She's just saying that kids are likely to make fun of you if you use that particular pronunciation. Serendipodous 11:04, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

@Serendipodous:To reply (belatedly!) to this, if that is all she is saying, why do we need to spend half a Kb of text saying it; it's well into the realms of the bleedin' obvious, isn't it? But of course she isn't just saying that, is she? As an astronomer she is hardly neutral on the subject; and the real purpose of the quote is to provide a backdoor for inserting non-neutral material, isn't it? Also, what are her statements that her pronunciation is the “formally educated” one, and is “from the Latin”, while Ur-ANUS (sic) has only become acceptable “over (the last) couple of hundred years”, if not linguistic points?
As for Germany "not even being a country then", that's a bit of a red herring (the USA wasn't a country in 1781 either, but I'm pretty sure Americans had a common nationality and language then); the German language hasn't changed that much in 200 years, so we can be sure Bode spoke Low German, probably with a Hamburg accent. While we're on the subject, we aren't exactly in the dark about the pronunciation in English then, either (see the plays by Sheridan, for example; and for the treatment of Latin names, see Pandanus, and Sejanus). What we can be sure of is that it wasn't pronounced in the manner favoured by astronomers now, as that derives from the New Latin pronunciation of the late 19th and early 20th centuries (which manages, bizarrely, to combine Latin stress patterns with English phonemes).
Regardless, the purpose of any edit is to improve what is here; so how is this (deleting the current footnote at least, and replacing it with something more neutral, more accurate, and (as it's meant to be a joke) more entertaining) not an improvement? Moonraker12 (talk) 23:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Point one: The bleeding obvious is irrelevant. Wikipedia contains plenty of articles on bleeding obvious topics, like human, knife and big toe. I don't really get your point vis a vis Prof. Gay's neutrality; are you implying that there is some grand conspiracy among astronomers to rid the world of the "your anus" pronunciation? Because if you can collect sources on that, it would be worth an article on its own. And yes, in 1781, if you were formally educated, you spoke Latin, and would have been familiar with the Latin pronunciation.

point two: "German" did not exist as a single language before 1800. Standard German existed in writing, but certainly not in speech, and trying to guess what pronunciation any German speaker would have used at that time is pointless.

Point three: I love CGP Grey, but his video doesn't really help; it suggests we shouldn't speak Uranus's name at all, which is fine for everyday communication, but not for an educational article. Besides, he's not a credited academic. Serendipodous 13:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

@Serendipodous: This is a right basket of red herrings, isn't it?
I didn't say that there was some conspiracy of astronomers to "to rid the world of the "your anus" pronunciation" ; I said that, as they (as a group) have a preferred pronunciation (the article says as much) they must think it is correct (unless you are suggesting they randomly chose something eccentric just to stop small boys laughing at them) and the corollary to thinking it's correct is that the alternative everyone else uses must be incorrect (or at least, less correct)
Nor did I say Bode spoke Standard German; he would have spoken Low German (which is still spoken today); and if he used Latin it would have been the continental Latin of the 18th/19th century (not the version used by Dr Pam and other astronomers today). Regardless, the planet's name would have sounded much the same in either German, and would have been much the same as his Latin, and as the ancient Latin (and indeed the ancient Greek) it's derived from.
And Grey doesn't need to be an academic (though he may well be) he just needs to be reliable; in this case he is more reliable than Dr Pam (whose area of academia is irrelevant to the matter at hand)
So we are still left with the question, why is it not an improvement to ditch the current footnote and replace it with something more neutral, more entertaining, and more accurate, in much the same amount of text? Moonraker12 (talk) 23:53, 5 January 2017 (UTC)
I think at this point we're going to have to call a third opinion. Serendipodous 20:23, 6 January 2017 (UTC)
@Serendipodous: OK; good plan. Moonraker12 (talk) 23:19, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
Response to third opinion request :
I'm reading through this talk page trying to get a handle on the dispute. I think I might have something to add to this, but if I've missed part of the dispute, or misunderstood it, let me know. Addressing each part of the original proposal:
  1. Adding the IPA to the Latin seems fine to me (although if the pronunciation is contentious it will need a source).
  2. Adding the IPA to the German is also fine, but this definitely would need a reliable source. What language Bode spoke isn't really that relevant—that would be up to the sources to figure out. I would encourage discussion of a more specific proposal for this part before putting it in the article, as this can easily run into original research.
  3. From a policy standpoint, I see no problems with retaining the footnote as is. When we're including quotes from blogs or podcasts they don't need to meet the technical definition of a reliable source, as we are merely quoting them, not stating their claims as fact. Bradv 14:50, 23 January 2017 (UTC)
Bradv: Thank you for wading through this, and for your comments.
The Latin IPA I was thinking of was this ("Ūranus" (Latin pronunciation: [ˈuranʊs]) from the Help:IPA for Latin page
The German IPA I had included in the proposal for a new footnote (which, I've just noticed, I haven't linked here; it was this); if that isn't going to be used it probably won't fit anywhere else, so I'll leave that.
If you feel the footnote, and the source used, are OK then I will have to live with that, though as it stands I feel it won't avoid being made fun of by grown men, as well as small boys!
On the subject of podcasts, though, are there any objections to adding the CGP Grey podcast to the external links section? Moonraker12 (talk) 22:05, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
I don't have a problem with it, but others might, since links to Youtube are almost always removed. Serendipodous 18:50, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
OK, I've added them (finally!); I'll just have to see what comes up about the link, though I can't think of any reason to delete a Youtube link, just because it's Youtube, nor one that doesn't also apply to the other links there. We'll see... Moonraker12 (talk) 17:38, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

In culture section

This section should be removed. The section (absent from the FA version) does a terrible job at explaining Uranus' overall importance to culture. It lists (only partially sourced) indiscriminate trivia, ranging from two verses of a poem to names of chemical elements and military operations.

(pinging @Serendipodous:) – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:56, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Uranus's role in culture isn't all that defined. If we were to ask ourselves "What is the defining role of Uranus in our culture?", the answer would probably be "your anus" jokes. The five naked eye planets have longstanding roles in culture, and Pluto, thanks to cuteness, has gained one too. But Uranus and Neptune? They're the forgotten ones. But there are fragments, like Holst and yes, like Keats. Serendipodous 07:47, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
It begs the question, why do we have a section on something that is not particularly important for the topic. On the other hand, what you say about importance to culture in general is what this section should really say, provided that reliable sources have come to the same conclusions. At minimum, these "fragments" ought to be sourced. – Finnusertop (talk ⋅ contribs) 14:10, 10 April 2017 (UTC)
I think Holst is worthy of mention; I think Keats is worthy of mention. Not sure if you'd find a book to back up that assertion. Serendipodous 22:18, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

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Faux Pierre Mon Dieu.

Nice featured article, however right at the beginning, section 1.1 Discovery, you have the wrong homme. Professor Pierre Lemonnier (b1675-d1757) was the father of Pierre Charles Le Monnier, who observed Uranus twelve times during the years 1750-1769 without realizing it. I would have changed it but we IPs are kinda like Pluto around here and I'm hoping someone else will. As for the different spellings of their last names, (they both signed their respective books as shown,) I imagine they didn't run into that much confusion being two astronomers named Pierre, but...

50.64.119.38 (talk) 11:06, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

I changed the link. As to IPs treatment, you can always create an account. Ruslik_Zero 14:34, 3 June 2017 (UTC)

Yah. Tell me Ruslik0, is there an advantage in using my real name? Oh wait... 50.64.119.38 (talk) 10:20, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

50.64.119.38, who said anything about using a real name? Simply that using an account provides some advantages to editing. — Huntster (t @ c) 21:41, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

I was being facetious. I'm sorry if I sounded snooty or bitter That was not my intention. I just refuse to use emoticons, and going lol on a comment that, if it had any humour. it is long gone, seemed inappropriate. Tell you the truth, I'm just here to read the articles and find the answers to the hundreds of times I've said to myself I wonder how/why/who...? I had noticed, according to the article, Lemonnier had died 12 years before he saw Uranus for the 12th time. I solved that one, then I saw the different last names. Anyway, I could go on, but I only told you guys so the next poor schmuck doesn't waste 40 minutes trying to find out how a dead guy missed iding the 7th planet. (Put that way it sounds easy. The id thing I mean). And that's pretty much the extent of my involvement. I've seen the 'discussions' held over the most trivial of things, and I'm trying avoid that. So far with mixed success (if you didn't spot that one you're on your own.) So, Monsieur @, Monsieur 0, au revoir, and no hard feeling I hope. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 04:43, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

50.64.119.38, I understand. And believe me, pointing out errors in articles is always appreciated. It's a moving target of course, but we want to be as accurate and complete as possible, and any help doing so is welcome. — Huntster (t @ c) 05:10, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

By the way, the reason I did so many re-edits, is I was trying to stack the 2 date spreads horizontally one above the other. Sounds way easier than it is. Just try to do it without being obvious. I wish I could say it was to dramatically portray the contrast between the beginning of an new age lying, akin to the heavens, atop the end of another. But it wasn't. I only stopped when I realized I had reduced a man's life to 9 characters and was moving them around to portray how obvious the decade long error was but yet it was I that had spotted it. That, and I realized the number of characters per line is a function of browser, image settings, OS, display, etc, and the word futile about covers it. Don't want you guy's to think I was doing it for wikicoupons or some other stupid reason. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 08:38, 6 June 2017 (UTC)

King George III stipend.

Section 1.1 Discovery last paragraph. At a minimum I would like to propose the inflation adjusted amount of Herschel's stipend be added to the article. " King George III gave Herschel an annual stipend of £200 (2016 ≈ £31,445.45)[1] on condition that he move to Windsor ". However, since (unlike pounds) most people in the world can covert US$ to their native currency, we should add " stipend of £200 (2016 ≈ £31,445.45 /US$40,838.25)[2][3] on condition ". I have included the relevant references in either case. This would help people realize the stipend was anything but chump change and remove the uncertainty as to whether or not the amount had already been adjusted. I would have added it myself, but see above. 50.64.119.38 (talk) 01:12, 15 June 2017 (UTC)

Magnetosphere

Maybe this could be of use to expand on the section by those who are more linguistically & technically knowledgeable in astrophysics than I?

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/06/170626093453.htm

JanderVK (talk) 11:27, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

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First line should contain pronunciation

Right now all the pronunciation information for Uranus is in the 'Name' section. The pronunciations of the word should be in the first line on the article, after 'Uranus'. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MennasDosbin (talk • contribs) 07:51, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

You will also find this information already in the infobox to the right in the very first screen. Double sharp (talk) 08:34, 3 August 2017 (UTC)
Not only that, but we don't use pronunciation info in that location for any of the other planets. I see no reason to do so here. — Huntster (t @ c) 00:52, 4 August 2017 (UTC)Uranus is the only planet whose name is derived from a figure from Greek mythology, from the Latinised version of the Greek god of the sky Ouranos.
I agree. My mistake. MennasDosbin (talk) 09:39, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

"Only" name from Greek mythology?

"Uranus is the only planet whose name is derived from a figure from Greek mythology, from the Latinised version of the Greek god of the sky Ouranos." This is stated twice, once in the lede and once more under the History/Name section. Besides being unsourced, this sounds wrong as stated without any sort of qualification. Pluto is named after the Greek god directly, not a Latinized derivation. Oh, but it's not a planet anymore. OK, but every other planet in our solar system (except Earth) is named after a Romanized Greek god, i.e., Mercury (Hermes), Venus (Aphrodite), Mars (Ares), Neptune (Poseidon). And as for Jupiter (Iouis pater, i.e. Father Zeus), that is absolutely a Latinized form of the Greek god's name. You just have to be aware of its variants in different cases of Latin to recognize this. "Jupiter" is the Anglicized simplification of the name in Latin.ZarhanFastfire (talk) 02:40, 24 August 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure you realise that many of these Roman gods were around even before their wholesale supplementation by tales from Greek mythology, Saturn being perhaps the most obvious example. Double sharp (talk) 03:32, 24 August 2017 (UTC)
Done some reading thanks to you. I was under the impression for a very long time, from primary school education, in fact, that the Romans assimilated the Greek gods into their own religion--which they did, but not in the way I had imagined. I didn't realize those names already existed, and that the Romans simply transferred stories about the Greek gods they deemed equivalent, as opposed to inventing new names for Greek deities, which is what I thought happened. When I learned Latin and saw the declension of Jupiter, I took that to be a proof of what I'd always understood. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 00:27, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
Well, you're welcome! I should note also that you were right in the case of Mercury, according to his article: he is not an indigenous Roman deity, but the other Roman namesakes of the planets are. Double sharp (talk) 16:57, 26 August 2017 (UTC)
Oh, nice to be partly right. I've made some small edits to the page in reflection of this. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 02:52, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
I am not sure if Mercury and Uranus are the same sort of case, though, because while Mercury was indeed taken wholesale from the Greek Hermes he then became a major part of Roman religion, and under a completely new name (unlike Pluto, which is also the Greek euphemistic name for Hades). The same cannot be said for Uranus. There is also the slightly worrying matter for me that this assertion in the article on Mercury the god is unreferenced, and that this is an FA. So I've tried editing it to say that Uranus is the only planet named directly from Greek mythology, without even passing through the Romans along the way: this preserves the main point that is currently cited, while leaving a little wiggle room for Mercury, should it have happened that way. What do you think? ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 03:21, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Fair enough. However, this goes back to the lack of sourcing I noted in the first place. I am beginning to question the veracity of the proposition that because a given planet (not discovered in the modern era) is currently identified with a Roman god's name (in modern English) that we can actually say it is named after that god in the first place. It sort of depends on what we mean by "named after" since this implies we know who did the naming and with some authority. When was planet X first named, for our purposes? Taking Mercury for example, the Greeks are still calling it Ερμής (Hermes), just as they always did, according to Greek Wikipedia. The Romans called it Mercurius and the English eventually followed suit (at some point abandoning Old English Woden, presumably named after Odin). All this by way of saying that the names of the "original" planets were variable (not to say mercurial). As inheritors of classical culture, we (con)fused the Greco-Roman beliefs into a single pantheon ourselves, and I'm not sure it's safe to say that any of the planets ostensibly named after Roman gods can be so said, just because we happen to have followed the Romans rather than the Greeks, at least without a source. If we take the Greeks to have named these planets first, and if Mercury is typical (and checking, Mars is still Άρης, i.e., Ares, to the Greeks), then it could well be argued that my original objection wasn't far off. But we'd still need a source for that, since (for all I know) the Greeks' names are derived from earlier (say, Babylonian) names. I'm sorry I'm rambling a little, but I'm half thinking aloud, half proposing a research project here. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 04:53, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Actually, the Greeks did not originally name the five planets they could see in the sky after the gods whose names they now take; instead they held them to be sacred to those gods, whose associations they took from the Babylonians. Hence the Greeks considered Mercury to be sacred to Hermes indeed, and eventually it was named Ερμής after him (sorry, I'm typing on my phone and can't easily use polytonic Greek), but it also had the name Στίλβων "the gleamer" before among them; and the identification of swift Mercury with their godly messeger derives directly from the Babylonians identifying it with theirs, Nabu. The same happened with Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, which originally had the Greek names Πύροεις "the fiery one", Φαέθων "the radiant one", and Φαίνων "the luminous one". Venus had two names, Εωσφόρος and Φωσφόρος "dawn-bringer; light-bringer" respectively, because it was not until later that they realised the morning star and evening star was one and the same. But they were also held to be associated with Ares, Zeus, Cronus, and Aphrodite, following the Babylonian assignments, and then these planetary names (Στίλβων etc.) were then treated as gods of the planets in the sky who were sacred to more important gods. In other words, a complete mess.
I think the current wording comes from the fact that today, in English, the planets' names (save Uranus) are all the same as names of Roman gods, while the analogous Greek gods have different names in English. This is of course Anglocentric, and other languages do it differently. In Chinese, the names of the classical planets follow instead the traditional five Chinese elements: so we have Mercury "water star", Venus "metal star", Mars "fire star", Jupiter "wood star", and Saturn "earth star". However, Uranus and Neptune use translations of what those Greek or Roman gods did: hence they are "sky king star" and "sea king star". This was also adopted for the first few asteroids and some important dwarf planets: thus Ceres "agricultural goddess star", Pallas "wisdom goddess star", Juno "marriage goddess star", Vesta "hearth goddess star", Pluto "underworld king star", Eris "discord goddess star", Quaoar "creation god star", etc. Yet some are not translated; Ixion for example keeps its Greek name, transliterated into Chinese as Yīkèxīwēng (it's not so close, but otherwise it wouldn't fit Chinese phonotactics). Japanese follows Chinese for the planets and Pluto but otherwise relies entirely on transliterations. And in Greek, the Latin names are entirely replaced by analogous Greek names, even in the asteroids – which soon created a problem, because of 4 Vesta and 46 Hestia, both of which come out the same way. But this is the English Wikipedia, so it is reasonable to say that the accidental regularity which resulted in English is a factoid worth noting, as many sources note it. Double sharp (talk) 05:49, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
You certainly live up to your name, ##. :) I'd often wondered what the planets were called in Asian countries, relatively free from Western astronomical traditions, and I am pleasantly surprised I was on the right track with Babylonian derivations--that history of science course in 1995(?) still useful. (Likewise I was delighted today to find out there's an Old English Wikipedia). My concerns are probably solved most easily with minor changes of wording. Whereas "name(d)" has implications of permanence and a namer, constrastively, for instance "called/known in English as x, which is derived from [Roman god]" is about as objectively true without need of a source as you can get, and has no other implications. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 07:04, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Why, thank you very much for the compliment! ^_^ I've tried to edit the text to talk about the name of Uranus; that should deal with the problem without leading to circumlocutions along the lines of "what Uranus is called". What do you think? Double sharp (talk) 09:06, 31 August 2017 (UTC)
Looks good. ZarhanFastfire (talk) 00:43, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Semicolon Abuse

This article uses semicolon (;) extensively (222 times). This punctuation mark was not meant to be used this much and well respected newspapers and magazines hardly ever use it. 193.242.214.225 (talk) 23:34, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

You're counting the citations. There are only 30 in the actual text. Serendipodous 17:45, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

When was the axial tilt discovered?

When was the extreme axial tilt of Uranus discovered? Up until some point, nobody would have known. Then someone figured it out. Who and when? Bizzybody (talk) 06:27, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

I assume someone would've guessed by the time a few moons were discovered. It's easy to see the Great Red Spot rotating around the same axis as the Galilean moons and someone wouldn't have been freaked out enough to assume this is a freak planet like Earth (moon doesn't go around the equator) Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 07:00, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
In 1787, when the orbits of the moons were discovered. Planets bulge out at their equators, and so if the moons didn't orbit around the equator, their orbits would have been distended as they passed over it. It's difficult to know who exactly first drew that conclusion though. Serendipodous 07:03, 7 September 2017 (UTC)
Amusingly, this natural assumption resulted in the tilt of Neptune being incorrectly known for decades, because everyone assumed that Triton was a regular satellite. Double sharp (talk) 08:50, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

External links modified

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Surface water ocean

This study was presented this summer 2017 with the aim at developing a mission concept to those planets, and it states that ice giants Uranus and Neptune are, by mass, about 65% water and other so-called "ices"; the terminology is "supercritical liquid water". I browsed both Urarus and Neptune articles in Wikipedia and I did not read anything similar suggesting surface water nor such % mass. I'm going to leave this 'on your desk' and am going to let more competent editors decide if this is a required update. The complete report is at [4]. -Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 16:23, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Stray text in infobox

There's a "0.210" that doesn't seem to mean anything. It should be defined or removed. 98.247.224.9 (talk) 19:45, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Removed. Ruslik_Zero 20:07, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

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Semi-protected edit request on 20 March 2018

Regarding the statement: "In contrast to the other planets, whose motions around the Sun resemble that of spinning tops, Uranus's motion can be visualised as that of a ball rolling on the ecliptic plane near solstices and of a spinning rifle bullet near equinoxes."

I'm questioning the use of the 'spinning rifle bullet' analogy. Aside from the fact that references to war/weapons/killing don't really have a relevant or appropriate connection here (e.g., why shouldn't it be a spinning satellite?) why is there a need for it at all? The previous reference to 'spinning tops' was not further qualified, for instance, as 'centrifuges' or 'washing machines' near equinoxes. The rifle mention is unnecessary, and one could argue, potentially offensive.

"... as that of a ball rolling on the ecliptic plane." (period) KS 154 (talk) 13:21, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree there is no need for such analogies. I edited the entry. Adjustments are encouraged. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:00, 20 March 2018 (UTC)
 Done Actually, I just removed it completely. In the original, it was unsourced and reads like a 7th-grade science teacher's analogy for their students. The corrected version that BatteryIncluded created was an improvement, but left a sentence that was still uncited and was now redundant to the first sentence of the section while also being less precise. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 15:52, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

External links

Things sometimes "creep in" so would someone look at the "External links" for possible integration or trimming? With exceptions 3 to 5 (four to five as possible exceptions) seems to be a "reasonable number" but 11 links plus 4 in the "Further reading" starts looking like link farming. Otr500 (talk) 15:52, 25 July 2018 (UTC)

Updated magnitude range

The new values of brightest and faintest apparent magnitude in the ‘infobox’ were reported in a peer-reviewed journal article that includes updated equations for computing planetary magnitudes. Those formulas will be used to predict magnitudes for future issues of The Astronomical Almanac published by the U.S. Naval Observatory and Her Majesty’s Nautical Almanac Office. The equations were solved at daily intervals over long periods of time in order to determine the magnitude extremes. As noted in the journal article, the apparent brightness of Uranus depends on the latitudes illuminated by the Sun and viewed by the observer. The extreme magnitudes reported here take those factors into account. The paper in Astronomy and Computing can be located at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ascom.2018.08.002. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Planet photometry (talk • contribs) 14:41, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

Name in Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese

The final paragraph of the "Name" section says that the planet has the same name in all four of the above languages - and then shows three Chinese characters in brackets (天王星), wrongly implying that all four languages are now written in Chinese characters. Obviously Chinese is, and some Japanese words are too, including "Uranus", which is thus also spelled 天王星 - only the Japanese pronunciation of the characters - "ten-nousei" or "ten-ousei", as there are two phonetic Japanese spellings, てんのうせい and てんおうせい - differs from the Chinese ("tiān wáng xīng"). Both Korean and Vietnamese were long ago written in Chinese characters, but have now replaced them with a uniquely Korean alphabet (Uranus = 천왕성, pronounced "cheonwangseong", which does sound rather like the Chinese name) and a Latin-based Vietnamese one (Uranus = sao thiên vương, which sounds very different). Although the four translations do indeed mean "sky king star", more or less, it is misleading to suggest that 天王星 is now standard Korean and Vietnamese, since neither language currently uses Chinese characters. I would suggest the Chinese characters simply be dropped, as they add nothing useful to the meaning of the text, and introduce confusing information. Alternatively the correct modern spellings could be inserted - but since the Chinese and Japanese names look identical and there would thus be only three translations for four languages, this would surely be confusing to readers who have no in-depth knowledge of East Asian languages (and that's the vast majority).89.212.50.177 (talk) 12:02, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

Or perhaps clarify the content of the parenthesis to "Chinese: 天王星". William Avery (talk) 12:30, 14 September 2018 (UTC)

"Pronunciation" in the leader

Information to be added or removed: Remove "(pronounce ɯranɯs, latin name after a greek god Οὐρανός - owranos)" from leader. Pronunciation is detailed in a lower section, so I propose something similar to "(from the Latin name "Ūranus" for the Greek god Οὐρανός)".

Explanation of issue: Non-standard pronunciations after no defined scheme; Greek should be capitalised; poor writing style.

References supporting change: MOS:IPA
83.93.197.115 (talk) 12:34, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Early observation

It seems that Christian Mayer might have seen Uranus in 1759.

Can you find references on that? His WP biography does not mention that. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 15:43, 16 January 2019 (UTC)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Johan_Lexell#Celestial_mechanics_and_astronomy . Lexell and Mayer seem to have known each other.
That entry states: "[…] the record of a star observed in 1759 by Christian Mayer in Pisces that was neither in the Flamsteed catalogues nor in the sky by the time Bode sought it." It suggests that he recorded the "star", and he was not aware it was a planet (Uranus), so it was not his discovery. An entry to such effect would be reasonable, but I don't know that history that well to venture into it. Cheers, Rowan Forest (talk) 21:24, 17 January 2019 (UTC)

Clarification requested

There is this sentence in the article that I think needs clarification:

One of the hypotheses for this discrepancy suggests that when Uranus was hit by a supermassive impactor, which caused it to expel most of its primordial heat, it was left with a depleted core temperature.

The cited reference is not available. If a supermassive impactor hit the planet, would not that transform most of that energy into heat? What is meant by a planet "expelling its primordial heat"? Maybe it lost part of its core? I think that sentence needs a re-write, and an additional source. Thanks, Rowan Forest (talk) 02:14, 11 March 2019 (UTC)

Nomination of Portal:Uranus for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether Portal:Uranus is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The page will be discussed at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Portal:Uranus until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the page during the discussion, including to improve the page to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the deletion notice from the top of the page. North America1000 14:22, 16 July 2019 (UTC)

Structure; disagreements over defining the "surface"

There seems to be some disagreement over exactly what constitutes the "surface" of an ice giant. The most obviously correct boundary, if it existed, would be the jump discontinuity in the planet's density where the gaseous hydrogen-helium atmosphere either becomes a supercritical fluid or gives way to the hot liquid water-ammonia-methane mantle. However, such a discontinuity might not exist. Some sources define the surface as the tropopause. Others define it as the layer of the atmosphere where the pressure equals 1 Earth atmosphere. Finally, there is the boundary between the rocky core and the liquid mantle, but scientists really have no idea where this boundary is or what the conditions at this boundary are like, other than that the temperatures and pressures are very high. Consistency across Wikipedia articles mentioning the "surface" of a gas giant would be appreciated. 73.70.13.107 (talk) 09:42, 14 December 2019 (UTC)

The article says 'For the sake of convenience, a revolving oblate spheroid set at the point at which atmospheric pressure equals 1 bar (100 kPa) is conditionally designated as a "surface"' which is quite unequivocal. Ruslik_Zero 20:53, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Uranus is leaking gas

This was the first search result that seemed like a good source, but maybe it isn't. It still explains the story I heard and maybe this can somehow be an improvement to the article.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 22:03, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Two citations are Geophysical Review Letters and Voyager 2 Constraints on Plasmoid-based Transport at Uranus. Others are [5], [6], [7], and [8]. — Joe Kress (talk) 22:59, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
I'm not sure what part of the article this should go in.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 17:43, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
It belongs in Magnetosphere, where the plasmoid is. The sentence "No heavier ions [than H2+] have been detected." must be removed. — Joe Kress (talk) 18:49, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Looks like the information is there in the last paragraph. Am I right?— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:04, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
You're right. I am removing the objectionable sentence. — Joe Kress (talk) 23:20, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Semi-major axis

The semi-major axis of the orbit of Uranus is described here as 2,875.04 Gm long but one of the sources ( https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/uranusfact.html ) has the value 2,872.46 Gm. Where does the larger value come from? Which value is correct? 2001:1AE9:24B:4600:F9CE:D8CF:580E:5BE6 (talk) 17:01, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

The source is in note "a". Ruslik_Zero 20:41, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

coldest planet?

see 2016 article ---> https://www.universetoday.com/65353/what-is-the-coldest-planet-of-our-solar-system/

Uranus is the coldest planet in the solar system. This has been confirmed by multiple sources, other than Universe Today. Thank you for your understanding. -Lukeskrobot11 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lukeskrobot11 (talk • contribs) 00:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

saturn and uranus

as feburary 17 the two planets are put together in a way that looks like a square this has not happened since 20 years ago — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1700:3E22:0:802E:7AC7:28A:20CA (talk) 17:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Lead section

It says that Saturn is Uranus's son, Jupiter is his grandson, and Mars is his great-grandson. But Mercury, Venus?, and Neptune are also direct descendants but they are not included in the lead. Either add the 3 (2?) or remove that fact entirely from the lead.108.46.173.109 (talk) 23:46, 23 May 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 June 2021

I wanted to add an image of Uranus in true colors, so that when someone sees this article, they will know how this planet would be seen by the human eye. Creativecomparisons1750 (talk) 11:25, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: Please make your request for a new image to be uploaded to Files For Upload. Once the file has been properly uploaded, feel free to reactivate this request to have the new image used. Please note that any such image must comply with Wikipedia's Image Use Policy, particularly where copyright is concerned. ‑‑ElHef (Meep?) 12:56, 7 June 2021 (UTC)

Lead image

Hey everyone, someone put up a true colour infobox image and was reverted because there was no discussion... well here is the discussion.

I favour a true colour image, since thats how people would see Uranus. Nsae Comp (talk) 21:38, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

@Creativecomparisons1750:@FlightTime Phone: Nsae Comp (talk) 21:46, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Nsae Comp (talk) 21:49, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Now allyou need is consensus.- FlightTime Phone (open channel) 22:49, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

I'm broadly in favor of planetary header images that depict the planet as it would be seen by human eyes, but in this case I need more information. There is, for instance, another image, inset at right, which also claims to be Uranus as human eyes would see it, and as you can see they don't quite match each other, nor the current header. I support whichever image best represents Uranus in natural color, but right now I don't know which image that is. Tisnec (talk) 22:59, 15 June 2021 (UTC)
Thank you Tisnec. Both "true color" images seem to have the same source by linking to the same picture/site of NASA. So I suspect that they are slightly different due to format/compression reasons. The source of both images seems to have only provided a collage of two Uranus images, so I further suspect that both pictures on Wikipedia were croped seperately from the collage on the NASA site. When you download the source image and those two on WP andnput them all side by side then you see that the difference is not visible. So I guess the difference that was pointed out is one of size. So I would just take the one with the higher resolution. But the one with higher resolution ("Uranus in true colour") seems to have higher compression, since its smaller and on close inspection you can see the difference in image compression. So I might suggest, since NASA features a higher resolution image to upload a superior image to both previous uploaded images, or just reach a consensus which of the two is better the one with higher resolution or the one with less compression. I still tend to higher resolution, also to prevent having more and more versions uploaded.
PS: The current lead image seems to be only a variation of used filters, just not in true colour and with Uranus's north at the bottom. Nsae Comp (talk) 06:37, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Looking at the source, I think that the higher resolution "Uranus_true_colour.jpg" seems to be a crop of the sourced .tif and the "Uranus.jpg" seems to be a crop of the sourced .jpg, since the "Uranus.jpg" features more and similar compression fragments to the sourced .jpg. So I stand more firmly for the higher resolution one. Nsae Comp (talk) 06:55, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
PPS: I just realize that the higher resolution is only a product of the broader framing, resulting in a broader black frame. Since if cut to the same framing as "Uranus.jpg" it seems to have the same resolution for the planet/disc. So looking at the compression again "Uranus_true_colour.jpg" still has less compression fragments. Since the fragments are not part of the .tiff and the resolution beikg basically the same, I would go with the one with less fragments. Nsae Comp (talk) 07:06, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
The two images seem to be also different in colour, I guess also a result of the editing from the source. Though the colour of "Uranus_true_colour" seems to be the same as in the source and "Uranus.jpg" seems to be brighter, i guess due to compression. Nsae Comp (talk) 07:36, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
All that said, the current image does not state in the original if it is not (!) true colour, only its WP description says that it is in "visible light". If that is true, it is the superior image resolution and compression wise. But the WP description also claims thaz it is the basis of the explicitly by the source described "true colour" images. Standing by source I would take the one that explicitly in the source says true colour. Nsae Comp (talk) 07:46, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Other sources like this [9] cite the explicit true colour source as the best true colour. Nsae Comp (talk) 07:50, 16 June 2021 (UTC)
Another reference [10] which uses the above image and states that that the saturation is in reality low because of tge Sun's weak light at that distance, so pointing to the less saturated image ("Uranus_true_colour.jpg"). Nsae Comp (talk) 03:02, 17 June 2021 (UTC)
Since two out of three other editors have state to prefer a true colour image and because of the above elaborated on sources, have I now put the "Uranus_true_colour.jpg" up. That said there might be close or more truthfully processed images (see work by Björn Jónsson [11]) but since this is sourced from and produced as true colour by NASA I take this as the most properly sourced true colour image.Nsae Comp (talk) 03:39, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Next perihelion date correction

I changed the date of the next perihelion to August 17 2050. I have three sources: VSOP87 [4] Bretagnon's complete VSOP87 model. It gives the 17th.

http://vo.imcce.fr/webservices/miriade/?forms IMCCE Observatoire de Paris / CNRS I calculated for a series of dates, five or ten days apart, in August 2050, using an interpolation formula from Astronomical Algorithms. Perihelion came very early on the 17th. INPOP planetary theory


And using the JPL Horizons web service in the same way: Aug 17.46 https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi#results Just before noon.

Hello Saros136. For the Uranus planet center I get the 19th @ 18.28307512au. The Uranus barycenter (7) does come to perihelion on 2050-Aug-17 03:00 @ 18.28307572756au (1 hour stepsize). But I think the planet center (799) is a better solution for perihelion calculations. -- Kheider (talk) 21:05, 7 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi. I redid it, sure it would make no difference if I switched to planet center approach you used. It did make a difference...moving the date to the 16th. After noon. Not a big disagreement with the IMCEE solution, which placed it early the next day.DianaCLnomad (talk) 00:35, 8 September 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/default.aspx
  2. ^ http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/resources/inflationtools/calculator/default.aspx
  3. ^ https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/yearly-average-currency-exchange-rates
  4. ^ Jean Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms (Richmond, VA: Willmann-Bell, 1998) p271

More on Uranus perihelion

I checked the range rates on Horizons here. Vectors at noon each day. The sign changed twice. From negative-positive-negative-positive. Same goes for the rdot numbers on the Horizons batch file posted as a reference. And for distances, The 19th and the 15th have the lowest. (At 00:00) At noon, the 14th, 18th, and 19th have the lowest. The kind of oddities that at other times also arise in cases with slow-moving bodies near perihelion. This is why with Uranus I much prefer using the best fit curve with a formula for an extreme value, and with positions at least 10 days apart. Neptune and Pluto are odder cases.

The differences in distance predictions between it and IMCEE http://vo.imcce.fr/webservices/miriade/?forms are minute: 30 km on August 17 0:00 here. 18.283075301 AU (using epoch 2470030.5, 20, 1 - day, TT) vs 1.828307553450090E+01 from Horizons. (Horizons, of course, gives far more digits than are meaningful.) The distances from the IMCEE decline daily, reach a minimum on the 17th, and increase daily. 

DianaCLnomad (talk) 15:03, 8 September 2021 (UTC)
Uranus (center body) https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi?find_body=1&body_group=mb&sstr=799 is under the influence of its moons, so yes, rdot can flip multiple times. You do need to pick the minimum on 2050-Aug-19 07:45 @ 18.28307581353au (15 min stepsize). Using different options I can get slightly different answers, but for Planet Center Horizons is always the 19th. The IMCEE still seems to be giving times based on the planet's barycenter. I am combining the two references since they do not agree. -- Kheider (talk) 00:41, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
From a month before and after perihelion, Triton will flip Neptune's rdot every 2-4 days (4 days negative then 2 days positive then the opposite after perihelion). -- Kheider (talk) 06:55, 12 September 2021 (UTC)
Indeed. The moons complicate it. The barycentric frame is better. If we applied your test to the next perihelion of Neptune, the date would be moved back to October 20. (2042-Oct-20 16:00:00.0000) Using the test for the last perihelion of Pluto would require an even bigger change: to. some date in 1990. (Jan 19 has a minimum distance. and sign change 0.5094212655h at 29.65639232 au. ) DianaCLnomad (talk) 19:16, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
No. Neptune barycenter is 2042-Sep-03, planet center is 2042-Sep-04 @ 29.8064 7406. On 2042-Oct-20 planet center is 29.8064 8 from the Sun. -- Kheider (talk) 20:31, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Also, by the same reasoning, you could justify the 14th for Uranus. That date marks the end of the long period of declining distances just as well as the 19th marks the beginning of the long movement towards aphelion. DianaCLnomad (talk) 19:53, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
You do need to look at the r column for "distance from the Sun in au". Uranus planet-center (799) comes to perihelion on the 19th, the barycenter (7) is on the 17th. A barycenter is a dynamical point, not a physical object. I think the common reader is more interested in the body center. -- Kheider (talk) 20:56, 22 September 2021 (UTC)

Uranus was known long before Hershel claimed discovery!!! True or False?

Uranus was discovered through telescope on March 13, 1781 AD by William Herschel while Neptune’s path was calculated by John Couch Adams and Urbain Le Verrier in 1846, based on whose calculation the German astronomer Johann Galle and his student Heinrich Louis d’Arrest discovered Neptune a few months later.

However, Sage Veda Vyasa mentioned Uranus, Neptune and Pluto in his epic poem Mahabharata and named them as Sweta, Syama and Teekshana.

Uranus or Sweta (Greenish White planet)

Vishesheena hi Vaarshneya Chitraam Pidayate Grahah….[10-Udyog.143] Swetograhastatha Chitraam Samitikryamya Tishthati….[12-Bheeshma.3]

Sage Vyasa states that some greenish white (Sweta) planet has crossed Chitra Nakshatra.

Neelakantha Chathurdhara, the Indian scholar who lived in Varanasi in the later half of the 17th century also had the knowledge of Uranus or Sweta. Sweta means greenish white, which was later discovered to be the color of Uranus.

Neelakantha writes in his commentary on Mahabharat (Udyog 143) that Shveta, or Mahapata (one which has greater orbit) was a famous planet in the Astronomical science of India. He calls this “Mahapata” which means one that has greater orbit and indicates a planet beyond Saturn. 82.34.150.113 (talk) 19:29, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

-> WP:Reference desk. (CC) Tbhotch™ 19:49, 19 April 2022 (UTC)

First paragraph in "Orbit and Rotation" section contradicts itself

The second sentence says "In 2033, the planet will have made its third complete orbit around the Sun since being discovered in 1781". The fourth says "Uranus will return to this location again in 2030–31" and I believe is referencing the same thing. I would suggest that one of these sentences is removed although I do not know which date is correct as I can't see what reference was used.

80.7.31.60 (talk) 23:34, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Skipped word? Rephrasing needed?

from the Internal Structure section, second paragraph: CamphorNoodles (talk) 16:37, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

The standard model of Uranus's structure is that it consists of three layers: a rocky (silicate/iron–nickel) core in the centre, an icy mantle in the middle and an outer gaseous hydrogen/helium envelope.[16][76] The core is relatively small, with a mass of only 0.55 Earth masses and a radius less than 20% of Uranus'; the mantle comprises its bulk, with around 13.4 Earth masses, and the upper atmosphere is relatively insubstantial, weighing about 0.5 Earth masses and extending for the last 20% of Uranus's radius.[16][76] Uranus's core density is around 9 g/cm3, with a pressure in the centre of 8 million bars (800 GPa) and a temperature of about 5000 K.[75][76] The ice mantle is not in fact composed of ice in the conventional sense, but of a hot and dense fluid consisting of water, ammonia and other volatiles.[16][76] This fluid, which has a high electrical conductivity, is sometimes called a water–ammonia ocean.[77]

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I'm assuming that either a word got skipped here or it's meant to be Uranus' total diameter, but I don't know enough about these things to be comfortable making that call myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CamphorNoodles (talk • contribs) 16:39, 17 July 2022 (UTC)

Orbit

The section “Orbit and rotation” mentions that Uranus “has returned to the point of its discovery northeast of Zeta Tauri twice since then, in 1862 and 1943, one day later each time”; however, I ran a simulation using Sky Safari Pro 6, and I instead get March 25, 1865 and March 29, 1949 as dates of return to its location among the stars, viz. south and barely east of the star 132 Tauri. The dates written in the article are currently 81 years apart, whereas “my” dates are 84 years apart, which corresponds to the period of revolution of Uranus around the Sun. I believe there was a mixup by the person who originally wrote 1862 and 1943, as 81 would seem to come from [17]81, its discovery date. As to why it says “one day later each time,” whereas I found eight and four days, respectively, of difference, that, I can’t think of a possible reason.

I will change the article to mention 1865 and 1949, but I will leave out the difference in days.

CielProfond (talk) 03:44, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

Are these redirects useful?

Caelus (planet) and Planet Caelus were recently created as redirects to this page. I can't find any mention in the article as to why these would redirect here and was wondering if they were useful and, if so, what should be added to the article to explain the terms. --User:Khajidha (talk) (contributions) 11:35, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

Apparently that is "supposed" to be its name because the Greek equivalent of Caelus is Uranus. But if this is not mentioned at #Name, they should be deleted as per WP:Redirect. (CC) Tbhotch™ 23:27, 13 August 2022 (UTC)

Color of title image

I think somewhere in the image someone messed with the color since if one follows the link provided the image on the NASA site (which is supposed to be the image in the title pic) is more colorful. Can anyone explain the discrepancy Lucinator (talk) 07:10, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Add promounciation

It can be either pronounced as Your-a-niss or your-ay-niss. Maybe add pronounciation Amogus girl (talk) 05:19, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

This is already covered under Uranus#Name. WhoAteMyButter (🎄talk│☃️contribs) 07:07, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 February 2023

The “Orbit” section begins, “Uranus orbits the Sun once every 84 years, taking an average of seven years to pass through each of the dozen constellations of the zodiac.” The clause “taking an average of seven years to pass through each of the dozen constellations of the zodiac” should be removed. It was added without citation and is scientifically incorrect and/or irrelevant. It confuses the planet’s sidereal period with its synodic period and ignores the fact that there are 13 constellations in the astronomical zodiac. Also, as the time the planet spends in each constellation varies widely, the “average” referenced in the added clause has no significance. 2600:1700:CBB0:3490:193A:AB2F:1529:220B (talk) 14:22, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Fair enough. Serendipodous 14:36, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Discovery of Uranus

I believe that the credit of the discovery of the planet Uranus by William Herschel, as stated in this article, is incorrect. My understanding is that it was his sister Caroline Herschel who made the discovery whilst assisting her brother, William, in cataloging hundreds of stars and comets over many years. William Herschel made the very large telescopes which allowed for the discovery. Nicholas McCarthy MexicoNoel (talk) 17:14, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Citation? Serendipodous 17:20, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 March 2023

Change "Presently available data does not allow a scientific determination of which model is correct" to "Presently available data do not allow a scientific determination of which model is correct". "Data" is plural. 97.99.5.125 (talk) 05:58, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

 Not done: That's debatable. Some compare it to agenda (a Latin plural that is now almost universally used as a singular). Please see this article for more info. M.Bitton (talk) 14:25, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Science

What is Uranus' number from the sun? 2601:586:8300:EBD0:40C4:63D5:C13E:9C4D (talk) 22:59, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

It is literally the first sentence. Serendipodous 09:58, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

"Uranus." listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Uranus. has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 November 6 § Uranus. until a consensus is reached. Gonnym (talk) 12:18, 6 November 2023 (UTC)

New papers on Uranus

Anton Petrov has unearthed several new papers on Uranus. Don't have time to do the reasearch myself but here it is. Serendipodous 14:26, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Serendipodous: See Talk:Neptune#True_color_image_of_Neptune, we are having the same discussion there. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Pronunciation

The article mentions the stress, but it still claims that the initially stressed syllable is pronounced like the word "your". This is a very English oriented way and not universally "scientific" at all, as the first syllable is not "your" but UH, literally "oohranus", not "youranus". 212.97.249.92 (talk) 10:37, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

"Returned to the point of its discovery"

But the Sun has moved too, so this is impossible. Grassynoel (talk) 21:01, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Wording revised so as to make clear that the text is about complete orbits, so that against the background of stars Uranus returns to the same position every 84 years, the movement of the Sun within our galaxy having no impact. David notMD (talk) 12:25, 2 February 2024 (UTC)

Link to Kelvin

Noticed that the K for Kelvin was not linked in the first paragraph, but instead is linked to its page in the Internal Structure section. I'm new to Wikipedia etiquette, but shouldn't the link appear in the first instance of the word? Thanks. Schwabeditor (talk) 08:57, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

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