Weather on Uranus

An ice giant knocked completely on its side, enduring 42-year winters.

Orbital Telemetry Live

Uranus

-195°C

Diurnal Temperature Swing 🌡️

-195°C Avg

Day Peak: -193°C | Night Low: -197°C

Atmosphere & Pressure 💨

Deep mantle pressures exceeding hundreds of kilobars

Hydrogen, helium, and methane ice, which absorbs red light to give the planet its cyan glow.

Supersonic Winds & Storms 🌪️

Retrograde jet streams racing up to 900 km/h.

Methane clouds and extreme 42-year seasons caused by its 98-degree sideways tilt.

Mission Data Provenance 🛰️

Flyby & Space Telescope Telemetry

Voyager 2 flyby telemetry combined with long-baseline Hubble Space Telescope observations.

Complex things. Made simple.

What would it feel like to experience the weather on Uranus?

Uranus rolls around the Sun on its side like a bowling ball. Because of this tilt, each pole faces 42 years of continuous sunlight followed by 42 years of pitch-black winter, creating unusual seasonal shifts.

Distance from Sun / Earth

2.6 – 3.2 billion km from Earth

Solar Rotation / Day Cycle

17.24 Hours

Primary Atmosphere

Hydrogen, helium, and methane ice, which absorbs red light to give the planet its cyan glow

3D Orbital Mesh

Real 3D GLB Model

Frequently Asked Questions About Uranus

Verified science answered in plain, accessible language.

Uranus has an axial tilt of 97.8 degrees, likely caused by a cataclysmic collision with an Earth-sized protoplanet early in solar system history.

Methane in Uranus' upper atmosphere absorbs red wavelengths of sunlight while reflecting back cool cyan and green light into space.

Yes! Even though Neptune is farther from the Sun, Uranus holds the record for the coldest recorded atmospheric temperature (-224°C / -371°F) because it emits virtually no internal heat.