For the next few nights Uranus, one of the most distant planets in our solar system, will be visible to the naked eye.
It will appear over the eastern horizon at 11:30 p.m. and then rise from about a third of the way up into the night sky gradually moving to more than two-thirds above the southern horizon by 4 a.m.
Providing increasingly dark skies for viewing, the moon is in its waning crescent phase, growing darker nightly on its way to new moon on Sept. 17.
Uranus will appear in the constellation Aries, the Ram, about 12 degrees left of the much brighter Mars. (Extend your arm and make a fist. The width of an adult fist is about 10 degrees in the sky.)
Of course, binoculars or a telescope will make it easier to view the seventh planet in our solar system, which will be shining at a relatively dim magnitude of +5.7 about 1.771 billion miles from Earth.
A season of new moon supermoons begins Sept. 17
According to NASA, Uranus takes 84.4 years to orbit the Sun, making a full rotation every 17.23 hours. With a diameter of about 31,518 miles, it is the third largest planet in our solar system. It has at least 27 moons.
It likely has a core of icy rock, surrounded by a mantle of water, methane and ammonia, with an atmosphere of helium and hydrogen, where temperatures can plummet below minus 370 degrees Fahrenheit.
Uranus was discovered in 1781 by British astronomer Sir William Herschel, who thought he had found a new comet. As other astronomers trained their telescopes on the object, they gradually determined that it was a planet.
