Extraterrestrial Skies - Uranus

Uranus

Judging by the colour of its atmosphere, the sky of Uranus is probably a light blue, i.e. cyan color. It is unlikely that the planet's rings can be seen from its surface, as they are very thin and dark. Uranus has a northern polar star, Sabik (η Ophiuchi), a magnitude 2.4 star. Uranus also has a southern polar star, 15 Orionis, an unremarkable magnitude 4.8 star. Both are fainter than Earth's Polaris (α Ursae Minoris), although Sabik only slightly. Uranus is unusual in that the obliquity of its ecliptic is 82° (angle between the orbital and rotational poles). The North Pole of Uranus points to somewhere near η Ophiuchi, about 15° northeast of Antares, and its South Pole halfway between Betelgeuse and Aldebaran. Uranus's "tropics" lie at 82° latitude and its "Arctic circles" at 8° latitude. On December 17, 2007, the Sun passed the Uranian celestial equator to the North and in 2029 the North Pole of Uranus will be nearly pointed at the Sun.

None of Uranus's moons would appear as large as a full moon on Earth from the surface of their parent planet, but the large number of them would present an interesting sight for observers hovering above the cloudtops. The angular diameters of the five large moons are as follows (for comparison, Earth's moon measures 31' for terrestrial observers): Miranda, 11–15'; Ariel, 20–23'; Umbriel, 15–17'; Titania, 11–13'; Oberon, 8–9'. Unlike on the other gas giants, many of the inner moons can be seen as disks rather than starlike points; the moons Portia and Juliet can appear around the size of Miranda at times, and a number of other inner moons appear larger than Oberon. Several others range from 6' to 8'. The outer irregular moons would not be visible to the naked eye.