"Uranus after Voyager 2's encounter with Uranus was a complete success. Astronomers now have the task of interpreting all the data they gathered. ONLY a few months ago, it was possible to put the sum total of our knowledge of the distant planet Uranus into a single article. But in just a few hours, the hardy space probe Voyager 2 changed all that...Before the encounter on 24 January, astronomers knew that Uranus was four times the size of the earth, tipped up so that it ‘rotates on its side” as it orbits the sun every 84 years. It had five moons, each a few hundred kilometers across and a set of nine very narrow rings."