Urano/Uranus

Urano

Urano (in greco antico: Οὐρανός, Ouranós, «cielo stellato, firmamento») era, nella mitologia greca, una divinità primordiale.
Urano è la personificazione del Cielo in quanto elemento fecondo.

Genealogia

È il padre delle titanidi Febe, Teti, Rea, Temi, Mnemosine e Teia e dei Titani Oceano, Iperione, Ceo, Crio, Giapeto e Crono, dei tre Ciclopi (Bronte, Sterope ed Arge) e dei Centimani (Cotto, Briareo e Gige) quest'ultimi anche detti Ecatonchiri.
I dodici titani sopra elencati sono i primi titani che, accoppiandosi a loro volta genereranno altri figli a loro volta definiti Titani.

Mitologia

Nell'opera di Esiodo, Teogonia, egli è figlio e coniuge di Gea (la Madre Terra). Altri poemi e racconti ne fanno il figlio di Etere (il Cielo superiore), senza che, in questa tradizione risalente alla Titanomachia, ci sia rivelato il nome della madre. Molto probabilmente quest'ultima era Emera (la personificazione del Giorno). Secondo la teogonia orfica, Urano e Gea sono due figli della Notte.
Mise in catene i Ciclopi gettandoli, man mano che nascevano, nel Tartaro, (le viscere di Gea) ed impedì agli altri figli di venire alla luce Secondo alcuni autori la ragione di questo rifiuto risiederebbe nella loro "mostruosità", mentre secondo altri è l'evidente paura di essere da loro spodestato.
Gea, ripugnata dall'atto del marito, persuase i Titani ad aggredire il padre e consegnò a Crono una falce da lei fabbricata. Così Urano, colto di sorpresa dal figlio proprio mentre stava per unirsi nuovamente a Gea, fu evirato. I suoi genitali vennero gettati in mare presso Cipro e dalla spuma marina formatasi nacque Afrodite, mentre le gocce di sangue che caddero sul suolo fecondarono un'ultima volta la terra, dando vita alle Erinni, ai Giganti ed alle Ninfe Melie. Detronizzato Urano, i Titani riportarono alla luce i fratelli che erano stati gettati nel Tartaro e consegnarono il potere a Crono.
Il luogo di questa mutilazione è stato situato in diverse parti del Mediterraneo: solitamente s'identifica con Capo Drepano (difatti drepanon in greco significa "falce"); talvolta si colloca questo luogo nell'isola dei Feaci, che sarebbe stata il falcetto di Crono gettato in mare e radicatosi in quel luogo (e infatti si diceva che i Feaci fossero nati dal sangue del dio); infine alcuni lo collocavano in Sicilia, più precisamente a Messina (l'antica Zancle, altro sostantivo greco che significa "falce") o a Trapani (l'antica Drepanon). In ogni caso, la Sicilia - fecondata dal sangue del dio - sarebbe divenuta per questo una terra particolarmente fertile.^{[secondo quale fonte?]}
Una tradizione diversa è riferita da Diodoro Siculo riguardo a questo dio. Costui sarebbe stato il primo re degli Atlanti, un popolo molto pio e giusto, che abitava sulle rive dell'Oceano. Egli avrebbe insegnato loro a coltivare la terra, a vivere civilmente ed avrebbe inventato il calendario secondo il movimento degli astri. Alla sua morte gli sarebbero state resi grandi onori divini ed essendo stato un grande astronomo, col passare del tempo, fu identificato col Cielo.
In questa tradizione si attribuiscono ad Urano 45 figli, 18 avuti da Tite (identificata poi con Gaia), e proprio per questo chiamati Titani. Le sue figlie furono Basileia ("la Regina"), più tardi Cibele, e Rea, soprannominata Pandora. La bellissima Basileia succedette al trono del padre e sposò il fratello Iperione, dal quale ebbe Helios e Selene (ovvero il Sole e la Luna). Diodoro menziona come figli di Urano anche Atlante e Crono. Platone vi mette anche Oceano e Teti.
L'eterogeneità della genealogia di Urano è dovuta al fatto che essa è una commistione di molte leggende e racconti, ma soprattutto un'interpretazione simbolica di cosmogonie dotte; così Urano non ha praticamente nessuna parte nei miti ellenici.
Tuttavia, Esiodo conserva il ricordo di due profezie, attribuite congiuntamente, ad Urano e a Gaia: anzitutto, quella che aveva avvertito Crono che il suo regno sarebbe finito dopo che egli fosse stato vinto da uno dei suoi figli.
Poi, la profezia fatta a Zeus, che lo metteva in guardia contro il figlio che avrebbe avuto da Meti (la "Prudenza", o in senso negativo, "la Perfidia"). Proprio obbedendo a questa profezia egli inghiottì Meti, con la conseguenza che poi dalla testa di Zeus sarebbe nata Atena.
Infine, Filone di Biblo ci riporta una leggenda siriana di Urano e Crono.

Genealogia (Esiodo)

Discendenti di Gaia (Terra) e Urano (Cielo)

Gea

URANO

Oceano

Crio

Giapeto

Rea

Mnemosine

Teti

Ceo

Iperione

Teia

Temi

Febe

Crono

I Titani

Bronte

Sterope

Arge

I Ciclopi

Cotto

Briareo

Gige

Gli Ecatonchiri

Discendenti di Gaia e del sangue di Urano (sinistra), di Gaia e dei genitali di Urano (destra)

Gea

Sangue di Urano

Genitali di Urano

Le Erinni

I Giganti

Le Meliadi

Afrodite

Diffusione del culto

Il dio era sentito, nel suo complesso, piuttosto remoto, lontano dalla vita quotidiana degli uomini. Ciò spiega, forse, il motivo per cui non sono ricordati luoghi di culto o altari eretti in suo onore.

Presenze letterarie antiche

Le principali notizie si leggono nella Teogonia esiodea: cenni anche in Platone (Timeo 40e), nella Biblioteca di Apollodoro (1.1.1 ss), in Diodoro Siculo (3.57 ss), in Cicerone (De natura deorum, 3.17.44), nei Saturnali di Macrobio (1.8.12).

Iconografia

La ricostruzione dell'iconografia di Urano non è certa, per la scarsità di documentazione relativa all'arte greca. Euripide, nello Ione, ricorda e descrive un tappeto nel quale erano raffigurate diverse divinità celesti, tra le quali Urano (Ione 1116). La sua immagine è stata inoltre ricostruita nell'ara di Pergamo dove appare come figura alata. Nell'arte romana Urano è invece più frequentemente rappresentato, anche perché diventa molto spesso la personificazione della volta celeste. È riprodotto sulla corazza della statua di Augusto di Prima Porta.

Giorgio Vasari, La mutilazione di Urano da parte di Crono, XVI secolo, Palazzo Vecchio, Firenze

Giorgio Vasari - http://www.uwm.edu/Course/mythology/0200/titans.htm

Crono (Saturno) castra suo padre Urano, il dio greco del cielo (prima di Zeus)

Uranus

Uranus (/ˈjʊərənəs, jʊəˈreɪnəs/; Ancient Greek Οὐρανός, Ouranos [oːranós] meaning "sky" or "heaven") was the primal Greek god personifying the sky and one of the Greek primordial deities. Uranus is associated with the Roman god Caelus. In Ancient Greek literature, Uranus or Father Sky was the son and husband of Gaia, Mother Earth. According to Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus was conceived by Gaia alone, but other sources cite Aether as his father. Uranus and Gaia were the parents of the first generation of Titans, and the ancestors of most of the Greek gods, but no cult addressed directly to Uranus survived into Classical times, and Uranus does not appear among the usual themes of Greek painted pottery. Elemental Earth, Sky, and Styx might be joined, however, in a solemn invocation in Homeric epic.

Etymology

The most probable etymology traces the name to a Proto-Greek form *worsanós (Ϝορσανός) enlarged from *ṷorsó- (also found in Greek ouréō 'to urinate', Sanskrit varṣá 'rain', Hittite ṷarša- 'fog, mist'). The basic Indo-European root is *ṷérs- 'to rain, moisten' (also found in Greek eérsē 'dew', Sanskrit várṣati 'to rain', Avestan aiβi.varəšta 'it rained on'), making Ouranos the 'rainmaker'. A less likely etymology is a derivative with meaning 'the one standing on high' from PIE *ṷérso- (cf. Sanskrit várṣman 'height, top', Lithuanian viršùs 'upper, highest seat', Russian verx 'height, top'). Of some importance in the comparative study of Indo-European mythology is the identification by Georges Dumézil (1934) of Uranus with the Vedic deity Váruṇa (Mitanni Aruna), god of the sky and waters, but the etymological equation is considered untenable.

Family

Genealogy

In Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus is the offspring of Gaia, the earth goddess. Alcman and Callimachus elaborate that Uranus was fathered by Aether, the god of heavenly light and the upper air. Under the influence of the philosophers, Cicero, in De Natura Deorum ("Concerning the Nature of the Gods"), claims that he was the offspring of the ancient gods Aether and Hemera, Air and Day. According to the Orphic Hymns, Uranus was the son of Nyx, the personification of night.^{[citation needed]} Uranus was the brother of Pontus, the God of the sea.

Descendants

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Uranus mated with Gaia, and she gave birth to the twelve Titans: Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Tethys and Cronus; the Cyclopes: Brontes, Steropes and Arges; and the Hecatoncheires ("Hundred-Handed Ones"): Cottus, Briareos, and Gyges.

Descendants of Gaia (Earth) and Uranus (Sky)
Gaia Uranus Oceanus Crius Iapetus Rhea Mnemosyne Tethys Coeus Hyperion Theia Themis Phoebe Cronus The Titans Brontes Steropes Arges The Cyclopes Cottus Briareos Gyges The Hecatoncheires

Further, according to the Theogony, when Cronus castrated Uranus, from Uranus' blood, which splattered onto the earth, came the Erinyes (Furies), the Giants, and the Meliae. Also, according to the Theogony, Cronus threw the severed genitals into the sea, around which "a white foam spread" and "grew" into the goddess Aphrodite, although according to Homer, Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and Dione.

Descendants of Gaia and Uranus' blood, and Uranus' genitals, according Hesiod
Gaia Uranus' blood Uranus' genitals The Erinyes The Giants The Meliae Aphrodite

Creation myth

Greek mythology

In the Olympian creation myth, as Hesiod tells it in the Theogony, Uranus came every night to cover the earth and mate with Gaia, but he hated the children she bore him. Hesiod named their first six sons and six daughters the Titans, the three one-hundred-handed giants the Hekatonkheires, and the one-eyed giants the Cyclopes.
Uranus imprisoned Gaia's youngest children in Tartarus, deep within Earth, where they caused pain to Gaia. She shaped a great flint-bladed sickle and asked her sons to castrate Uranus. Only Cronus, youngest and most ambitious of the Titans, was willing: he ambushed his father and castrated him, casting the severed testicles into the sea.
For this fearful deed, Uranus called his sons Titanes Theoi, or "Straining Gods." From the blood that spilled from Uranus onto the Earth came forth the Giants, the Erinyes (the avenging Furies), the Meliae (the ash-tree nymphs), and, according to some, the Telchines. From the genitals in the sea came forth Aphrodite.
The learned Alexandrian poet Callimachus reported that the bloodied sickle had been buried in the earth at Zancle in Sicily, but the Romanized Greek traveller Pausanias was informed that the sickle had been thrown into the sea from the cape near Bolina, not far from Argyra on the coast of Achaea, whereas the historian Timaeus located the sickle at Corcyra; Corcyrans claimed to be descendants of the wholly legendary Phaeacia visited by Odysseus, and by circa 500 BCE one Greek mythographer, Acusilaus, was claiming that the Phaeacians had sprung from the very blood of Uranus' castration.
After Uranus was deposed, Cronus re-imprisoned the Hekatonkheires and Cyclopes in Tartarus. Uranus and Gaia then prophesied that Cronus in turn was destined to be overthrown by his own son, and so the Titan attempted to avoid this fate by devouring his young. Zeus, through deception by his mother Rhea, avoided this fate.
These ancient myths of distant origins were not expressed in cults among the Hellenes. The function of Uranus was as the vanquished god of an elder time, before real time began.
After his castration, the Sky came no more to cover the Earth at night, but held to its place, and "the original begetting came to an end" (Kerényi). Uranus was scarcely regarded as anthropomorphic, aside from the genitalia in the castration myth. He was simply the sky, which was conceived by the ancients as an overarching dome or roof of bronze, held in place (or turned on an axis) by the Titan Atlas. In formulaic expressions in the Homeric poems ouranos is sometimes an alternative to Olympus as the collective home of the gods; an obvious occurrence would be the moment in Iliad 1.495, when Thetis rises from the sea to plead with Zeus: "and early in the morning she rose up to greet Ouranos-and-Olympus and she found the son of Kronos ..."
William Sale remarks that "... 'Olympus' is almost always used of [the home of the Olympian gods], but ouranos often refers to the natural sky above us without any suggestion that the gods, collectively live there". Sale concluded that the earlier seat of the gods was the actual Mount Olympus, from which the epic tradition by the time of Homer had transported them to the sky, ouranos. By the sixth century, when a "heavenly Aphrodite" (Aphrodite Urania) was to be distinguished from the "common Aphrodite of the people", ouranos signifies purely the celestial sphere itself.

Hurrian mythology

The Greek creation myth is similar to the Hurrian creation myth. In Hurrian religion Anu is the sky god. His son Kumarbis bit off his genitals and spat out three deities, one of whom, Teshub, later deposed Kumarbis. In Sumerian mythology and later for Assyrians and Babylonians, Anu is the sky god and represented law and order.^{[citation needed]}
It is possible that Uranus was originally an Indo-European god, to be identified with the Vedic Váruṇa, the supreme keeper of order who later became the god of oceans and rivers, as suggested by Georges Dumézil, following hints in Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). Another of Dumézil's theories is that the Iranian supreme God Ahura Mazda is a development of the Indo-Iranian *vouruna-*mitra. Therefore, this divinity has also the qualities of Mitra, which is the god of the falling rain.

Uranus and Váruṇa

Uranus is connected with the night sky, and Váruṇa is the god of the sky and the celestial ocean, which is connected with the Milky Way.
Georges Dumézil made a cautious case for the identity of Uranus and Vedic Váruṇa at the earliest Indo-European cultural level. Dumézil's identification of mythic elements shared by the two figures, relying to a great extent on linguistic interpretation, but not positing a common origin, was taken up by Robert Graves and others. The identification of the name Ouranos with the Hindu Váruṇa, based in part on a posited PIE root *-ŭer with a sense of "binding"—ancient king god Váruṇa binds the wicked, ancient king god Uranus binds the Cyclopes, who had tormented him. The most probable etymology is from Proto-Greek *(F)orsanόj (worsanos) from a PIE root *ers "to moisten, to drip" (referring to the rain).

Cultural context of flint

The detail of the sickle's being flint rather than bronze or even iron was retained by Greek mythographers (though neglected by Roman ones). Knapped flints as cutting edges were set in wooden or bone sickles in the late Neolithic, before the onset of the Bronze Age. Such sickles may have survived latest in ritual contexts where metal was taboo, but the detail, which was retained by classical Greeks, suggests the antiquity of the mytheme.

Planet Uranus

The ancient Greeks and Romans knew of only five 'wandering stars' (Greek: πλανήται, planētai): Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Following the discovery of a sixth planet in 1781 using a telescope, there was long-term disagreement regarding its name. Its discoverer William Herschel named it Georgium Sidus (The Georgian Star) after his monarch George III. This was the name preferred by English astronomers, but others such as the French preferred "Herschel". Finally, the name Uranus became accepted in the mid-19th century, as suggested by astronomer Johann Bode as the logical addition to the existing planets' names, since Mars (Ares in Greek), Venus, and Mercury were the children of Jupiter, Jupiter (Zeus in Greek) the son of Saturn, and Saturn (Cronus in Greek) the son of Uranus. What is anomalous is that, while the others take Roman names, Uranus is a name derived from Greek in contrast to the Roman Caelus. 

Central part of a large floor mosaic, from a Roman villa in Sentinum (now known as Sassoferrato, in Marche, Italy), ca. 200–250 C.E. Aion, the god of eternity, is standing inside a celestial sphere decorated with zodiac signs, in between a green tree and a bare tree (summer and winter, respectively). Sitting in front of him is the mother-earth goddess, Tellus (the Roman counterpart of Gaia) with her four children, who possibly represent the four seasons.

User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2007-02-08

 Aeon-Uranus, Gaea, Carpi, Horae and Prometheus, Greco-Roman mosaic, Damascus Museum

La castration de Saturne Roman de la rose Guillaume de Lorris et jean Meun, Paris, 1er quart du XVe s.. BNF, Manuscrits, français 1570, f. 45 © Bibliothèque nationale de France

Anonimo 

 Castration of Saturn, MS Douce 195 Guillaume de Lorris & Jean de Meung, Roman de la Rose. France, 15th century (end). Bodleian Library, MS. Douce 195, fol. 76v

 Anonimo

Castration (medieval miniature)

 Jupiter émasculant Saturne, Évard de Conty, Le Livre des échecs amoureux moralisés, enluminures par Robinet Testard, vers 1496-1498. BNF, Manuscrits, Fr. 143 fol. 28. 

Anonimo

 The Castration of Uranus, pl. 1 from the series Subjects from Roman History after Polidoro da Caravaggio's fresco on the façade of the Palazzo Milesi, Rome 

Printmaker: Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi After: Polidoro da Caravaggio

XVII sec. 

 

Saturn castrating Uranus, and the Rape of the Sabines, formerly in a sketch-book; the women struggling to free themselves from the soldiers, head of a satyr on a plinth among them Pen and brown ink, over black chalk Watermark: fleur-de-lys in a circle. One of a group of five leaves of a sketchbook with copies of friezes (the other four: 1870,0813.895/898). Copied from the chiaroscuri painted by Polidoro da Caravaggio on the façade of Palazzo Milesi, Rome. Lit: Lit: P.Pouncey and J.A. Gere, 'Italian drawings in the BM, Raphael and his circle', London, 1962, I, no. 223, II, pl. 194, (as after Polidoro); L. Ravelli, 'Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio', Bergamo, 1978, no. 777.

Ascribed to: Ambrogio Giovanni Figino

tra il 1563 e il 1608  

 Original image description from the Deutsche Fotothek Astronomie & Forschung

 Deutsche Fotothek

1610

 Urano

The God Uranus - YouTube

YouTube

The God Uranus

 Ouranos - Uranus

 The God Uranus

Uranus god of the sky

 Uranus_God

  This is an image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in 1986. See Uranus.jpg for how Uranus would appear in visible light.

NASA/JPL-Caltech

 dreamsuranus

A 1998 false-colour near-infrared image of Uranus showing cloud bands, rings, and moons obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS camera.

Hubble Space Telescope - NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

Ohitsme--Ouranos

 Simulated Earth view of Uranus from 1986 to 2030, from southern summer solstice in 1986 to equinox in 2007 and northern summer solstice in 2028.

Tomruen - Own work

Simulated appearance of Uranus and rings, seen from earth from 1985 to 2030, reversing the visible pole

 Dean Ellis: Greek God Uranus

 Artwork Year: 1994

Size comparison of Earth and Uranus

NASA (image modified by Jcpag2012) - Images found in NASA

Diameter comparison of Uranus and Earth. Approximate scale is 90 km/px.

 Markus Mäx Riser
URANUS God of the Sky and Heavens.
Uranus a star-spangled man with long arms and legs, with his finger-tips in the far east, his toes in the far west, and his arching body raised to form the dome of the sky.
The God of eternal time.

costume designer Grzegorz Kaszubski — presso Kant-Garagen.

 Diagram of the interior of Uranus

Uranus-intern-de.png: FrancescoA derivative work: WolfmanSF (talk) - Uranus-intern-de.png

Uranus interior with English legend. The original image of Uranus was cut from Commons (from Frederik Beuk Opengewerkte ijsreuzen.jpg).

Greek Primordial Uranus God Original Sky Father by AnarchyTwisted500

 

Aurorae on Uranus taken by the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) installed on Hubble.

ESA/Hubble

Ever since Voyager 2 beamed home spectacular images of the planets in the 1980s, planet-lovers have been hooked on extra-terrestrial aurorae. Aurorae are caused by streams of charged particles like electrons, that come from various origins such as solar winds, the planetary ionosphere, and moon volcanism. They become caught in powerful magnetic fields and are channelled into the upper atmosphere, where their interactions with gas particles, such as oxygen or nitrogen, set off spectacular bursts of light. The alien aurorae on Jupiter and Saturn are well-studied, but not much is known about the aurorae of the giant ice planet Uranus. In 2011, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope became the first Earth-based telescope to snap an image of the aurorae on Uranus. In 2012 and 2014 astronomers took a second look at the aurorae using the ultraviolet capabilities of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) installed on Hubble. They tracked the interplanetary shocks caused by two powerful bursts of solar wind travelling from the Sun to Uranus, then used Hubble to capture their effect on Uranus’ aurorae — and found themselves observing the most intense aurorae ever seen on the planet. By watching the aurorae over time, they collected the first direct evidence that these powerful shimmering regions rotate with the planet. They also re-discovered Uranus’ long-lost magnetic poles, which were lost shortly after their discovery by Voyager 2 in 1986 due to uncertainties in measurements and the featureless planet surface. This is a composite image of Uranus by Voyager 2 and two different observations made by Hubble — one for the ring and one for the aurorae.

 Uranus's southern hemisphere in approximate natural colour (left) and in shorter wavelengths (right), showing its faint cloud bands and atmospheric "hood" as seen by Voyager 2

 

Uranus, father of Saturn and grandfather of Jupiter

 The first dark spot observed on Uranus. Image obtained by the HST ACS in 2006.

The original uploader was Ruslik0 at English Wikipedia. - Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Shizhao using CommonsHelper.

The first dark spot on Uranus ever observed. The image is obtained by ACS on HST in 2006. Image was downloaded from  (Credit: NASA, ESA, L. Sromovsky and P. Fry (University of Wisconsin), H. Hammel (Space Science Institute), and K. Rages (SETI Institute)).

  Uranus God of Rebirth

 The Uranus System (NACO/VLT image)

European Southern Observatory - Peering at Uranus's Rings as they Swing Edge-on to Earth for the First Time Since their Discovery in 1977

The rings of Uranus are shown here captured almost exactly edge-on to Earth. This false-colour image was obtained by the NAOS-CONICA infrared camera on ESO's Very Large Telescope at Paranal, Chile. It was taken at 9:00 UT on 16 August 2007, just two hours after Earth had crossed to the lit side of the ring plane. We are peering over the sunlit face of the rings at an opening of only 0.003 degree, an angle so small that the thin rings nearly disappear. At right, the region around the planet has been enhanced to show a thin line, which is sunlight glinting off the ring edges and also reflected by dust clouds embedded within the system. The pictures at left shows the planet and identifies four of its largest moons. One can clearly discern banding in the atmosphere and a bright cloud feature near the planet's south polar collar, on the left side of the image. This is a composite of images taken at infrared wavelengths. The planet is shown in false colour, based on images taken at wavelengths of 1.2 and 1.6 microns. The rings are extracted from an image taken at 2.2 microns, where the planet is darker and therefore the rings are easier to detect. The observations were done by Daphne Stam (TU Delft) and Markus Hartung (ESO, Chile), in close collaboration with Mark Showalter (SETI) and Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley and TU Delft).

Roman god Uranus.
Rei Inamoto

Animation about the discovering occultation in 1977. (Click on it to start)

Orion 8 - Own work, with Google SketchUp v7.1

This animation shows the event that helped to discover the rings of Uranus. On March 10th, 1977 Uranus transitted before the star SAO 158687, the event was observed and recorded by Kuiper Airborne Observatory. A few unexpected and momentary falls of the brightness of the star were found, and the only explanation was that there must be thin rings around Uranus. Those rings were photographed by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Uranus. RVI-0116: Caelus, statuette. Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Göttingen, 1845- Dresden, 1923), Ausfürliches Lexikon der griechisches und römisches Mythologie, 1884.

 Uranus has a complicated planetary ring system, which was the second such system to be discovered in the Solar System after Saturn's.

Ruslik0 - Own work

To-scale schematic of the ring and moon system of the planet Uranus.

“     Sired by Ouranos, he who gave life to the universe.     ”

–Gyges

Astronomical symbol for the planet Uranus, and alchemical symbol of platinum. See File:Uranus's astrological symbol.svg for the planet's astrological symbol.

Lexicon - Own work

 

 Steampunk Urano argento tonica collana in ottone

 

Crescent Uranus as imaged by Voyager 2 while en route to Neptune

NASA - http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00143

Original Caption Released with Image: This view of Uranus was recorded by Voyager 2 on Jan 25, 1986, as the spacecraft left the planet behind and set forth on the cruise to Neptune Voyager was 1 million kilometers (about 600,000 miles) from Uranus when it acquired this wide-angle view. The picture -- a color composite of blue, green and orange frames -- has a resolution of 140 km (90 mi). The thin crescent of Uranus is seen here at an angle of 153 degrees between the spacecraft, the planet and the Sun. Even at this extreme angle, Uranus retains the pale blue-green color seen by ground-based astronomers and recorded by Voyager during its historic encounter. This color results from the presence of methane in Uranus' atmosphere; the gas absorbs red wavelengths of light, leaving the predominant hue seen here. The tendency for the crescent to become white at the extreme edge is caused by the presence of a high-altitude haze Voyager 2 -- having encountered Jupiter in 1979, Saturn in 1981 and Uranus in 1986 -- will proceed on its journey to Neptune. Closest approach is scheduled for Aug 24, 1989. The Voyager project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Uranus's astrological (not astronomical) symbol, in SVG, sized to match all the other symbols. Also at Unicode U+2645, which renders as ♅.

Lexicon - Own work