Michael Brightmore

Now that's interesting because it was in that position when Voyager 2 actually flew past it.

It had got its southern axis pointing directly towards the Sun.

And what Voyager 2 didn't see, which it expected, was a lot of weather patterns on the surface.

You know, as we see all the time with Jupiter, we see these lovely bands and vortexes and the great red spot.

But Uranus at that time in 1986 was quite bland.

You know, there was no cloud structures.

It wasn't realized at the time, but that was a phenomena of this position in the sky.

Later on, as it got a quarter of the way around its orbit, you know, in about 2007, the Hubble Space Telescope was looking at it and a lot more weather features started to appear.

So, you know, depending on where it is in its orbit,

dictates the sort of weather patterns.

And it does have weather.

I mean, it has winds up to 800 miles an hour.

They're largely hidden by the atmosphere, but using different wavelengths, such as infrared.

You know, we are able to see these now, but unfortunately, Voyager 2 didn't get much of a look at them.

So that's the actual tilt of Uranus.

It's almost on its side, and it's like rolling around the sun in its 84-year orbit.