Sir William Herschel observed the planet on 13 March 1781 while in the garden of his house at 19 New King Street in the town of Bath, Somerset (now the Herschel Museum of Astronomy),[20] but initially reported it (on 26 April 1781) as a "comet".[21] Herschel "engaged in a series of observations on the parallax of the fixed stars",[22] using a telescope of his own design.

Uranus's axis of rotation lies on its side on the plane of the Solar System, with an axial tilt of 97.77 degrees. This gives it seasonal changes completely unlike those of the other major planets. Other planets can be visualized to rotate like tilted spinning tops on the plane of the Solar System, while Uranus rotates more like a tilted rolling ball. Near the time of Uranian solstices, one pole faces the Sun continuously while the other pole faces away. Only a narrow strip around the equator experiences a rapid day-night cycle, but with the Sun very low over the horizon as in the Earth's polar regions. At the other side of Uranus's orbit the orientation of the poles towards the Sun is reversed. Each pole gets around 42 years of continuous sunlight, followed by 42 years of darkness.[49] Near the time of the equinoxes, the Sun faces the equator of Uranus giving a period of day-night cycles similar to those seen on most of the other planets. Uranus reached its most recent equinox on 7 December 2007.[50][51]

The planet Uranus is associated with homosexuality because, based on Greek mythology about Aphrodite, beginning in the late 19th century, the term Uranian has been used to denote homosexuals.[119] The final show of the Cockettes, a San Francisco drag troupe, took place in the summer of 1972; it was called Journey to the Center of Uranus, reflecting the homophone "your anus." In that show drag queen Lady Divine performed her song "The Crab at the Center of Uranus" while dressed as a lobster.[120] The Club Uranus was a popular queer dance club that took place on Sunday nights at the End Up in San Francisco in the early 1990s; it lasted from December 1989 to December 1992.[121]