Planet Uranus Discovered in 1781

On 13th March 1781, an astronomer named William Herschel was looking at the sky. He was using a machine named a ‘telescope’ that helped him look at the stars far away. There, he saw a bright light. He found that the bright light was a planet. That is how the planet Uranus was found!

What is a planet? A planet is a big round ball in space. It goes around a star. Our Earth is also a planet. We have eight planets that circle around the sun. Uranus is the seventh planet from the sun. 

Uranus was named after a God from the country of Greece. This Greek God was the god of the sky!

Herschel became very famous after this discovery. He also found out two big moons of Uranus. After some years, the eighth planet was found and it was named Neptune. Today, we celebrate the day when Uranus was found, 243 years ago.