Uranus
Planet
Disruption, invention and the sudden break with what was.
In the sky right now
Gemini 5°05′
Ecliptic longitude 65.10°
Currently retrograde
Daily motion -0.030° per day
Retrograde cycle
- StatusRetrograde
- Stationed retrogradeSep 10, 2026
- Goes directFeb 8, 2027
- Uranus retrogrades once a year for about five months.
Astronomy
- Discovered
- 13 March 1781, by William Herschel from Bath, England
- Average distance from the Sun
- 2.87 billion km (19.2 AU)
- Orbital period
- 84 Earth years
- Rotation period
- 17 hours 14 minutes, retrograde
- Axial tilt
- 97.8° — it orbits on its side
- Diameter
- 50,724 km
- Moons
- 29 known as of August 2026, named for Shakespearean and Popean characters
- Colour
- Pale cyan, from methane absorbing red light
Planetary facts follow NASA and JPL reference data. Moon counts reflect IAU-recognised satellites as of August 2026. Zodiacal positions and retrograde stations are calculated live using the app's VSOP87/NOVAS-derived astronomy engine rather than being hard-coded. The lunar nodes shown are True (osculating) nodes, computed from the Moon's instantaneous orbital plane — the same convention Astro.com uses by default.
Greek & Roman mythology
Greek
Ouranos
Roman
No Roman equivalent — see the note below
Ouranos was the primordial sky, born of Gaia and then her consort; together they produced the Titans, the Cyclopes and the hundred-handed Hecatoncheires. He imprisoned his own children inside Gaia, who armed Cronus with an adamantine sickle to castrate him — the blood produced the Furies and the Giants, and the severed parts falling into the sea produced Aphrodite.
The Roman counterpart is Caelus, a shadowy figure who was never a major cult deity in the way Jupiter or Mars were.
Uranus is the only major planet with a Greek rather than Roman name. Herschel wanted to call it Georgium Sidus after King George III; the German astronomer Johann Bode proposed Uranus so the sequence would run Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus — father, grandfather, great-grandfather. The name only became universal after about 1850.
In a natal chart
Uranus governs sudden change, rebellion, invention, technology, awakening and everything that breaks a pattern. Its discovery coincided with the American and French revolutions, a coincidence astrologers have never stopped citing.
It spends about seven years in each sign, so its influence is generational rather than personal.
Uranus is the modern ruler of Aquarius, which traditionally belonged to Saturn.
Rules: Aquarius (modern)
See where Uranus falls in your chartExplore the rest of the sky
Don't write your paper based on this page. We keep the facts as accurate as we can, but moon counts get revised, missions rewrite the textbooks, and the live positions are computed on the fly — treat this as a reliable starting point, not a real-time oracle.