Planet Uranus taken from Voyager 2 Spacecraft. (Photo by Time Life Pictures/JPL/NASA/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images)

In the distant past, Uranus took an absolute pounding, say researchers, without even cracking a smile.

My isn’t Uranus full of surprises?

Researchers believe that an ancient impact with an Earth-sized rock might have not only tilted Uranus but also created the ice giant’s moons.

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Uranus’s axis of spin is very tilted, compared to other planets in the solar system – which mostly point roughly the same way as the poles of the sun.


Researchers at Kyoto University now believe that an ancient cosmic impact may not only have given Uranus its 98-degree ‘tilt’ – but also created most of its moons.

False color composite photograph of planet Uranus, taken by Voyager 2 on January 26, 1986. (Photo by ?? CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images)

Uranus has 27 moons, 18 of which orbit around the planet’s equator, the researchers told Space.com.



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Computer simulations show that an ancient cosmic impact could have created a ‘debris disc’, from which moons would later form.

The impact could also have given the planet its distinctive tilt.

Kyoto University researcher Yuya Ishizawa said, ‘Material from the two bodies is ejected in a debris disk, and finally satellites are formed from the debris disk.

‘It is possible to explain the axial tilt and the formation of the regular satellites of Uranus simultaneously.’

Has Uranus been probed? NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun, in January 1986. At its closest, the spacecraft came within 81,500 kilometres (50,600 miles) of Uranus’s cloudtops on January 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and the magnetic environment surrounding Uranus. A map of the outer solar system (Picture: AFP/Getty) Since launch on August 20, 1977, Voyager 2’s itinerary has taken the spacecraft to Jupiter in July 1979, Saturn in August 1981, and then Uranus. Voyager 2’s next encounter was with Neptune in August 1989. Both Voyager 2 and its twin, Voyager 1, will eventually leave our solar system and enter interstellar space. MORE: Sorry, you’ve probably been saying the word Uranus wrong your whole life Voyager 2’s images of the five largest moons around Uranus revealed complex surfaces indicative of varying geologic pasts. The cameras also detected 10 previously unseen moons. The 11 rings of Uranus, opaque and a few kilometres wide each, are relatively young in space terms – not more than 600 million years old. They were probably formed by collisional fragmentation of several moons that once orbited the planet (Picture: BSIP/UIG Via Getty) Several instruments studied the ring system, uncovering the fine detail of the previously known rings and two newly detected rings. Voyager data showed that the planet’s rate of rotation is 17 hours, 14 minutes. The spacecraft also found a Uranian magnetic field that is both large and unusual. In addition, the temperature of the equatorial region, which receives less sunlight over a Uranian year, is nevertheless about the same as that at the poles.