No joke! We can see an ‘ice giant’ in South Carolina tonight

Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun and one of two cold and windy “ice giants,” will be visible with the naked eye or binoculars on Thursday night in South Carolina skies.

Earth is between the planet and the sun, so, to our eyes, Uranus will seem brighter than it will any other time of the year.

Where to see it: Look in the area of the V-shaped Pisces constellation high in the southeast sky all night, according to National Geographic. Uranus will look like a star but will have a blue-green tint.

By early morning, it will have shifted to the western sky, astronomy.com says.

Here’s some facts about Uranus from NASA:

▪  Uranus appears to spin on it’s side like a bowling ball.

▪  If Earth was the size of a nickel, Uranus would be about as big as a softball.

▪  Uranus makes a complete orbit around the sun in about 84 Earth years.

▪  Uranus gets its blue-green color from methane gas in its atmosphere.

This story was originally published October 19, 2017 at 3:10 PM with the headline "No joke! We can see an ‘ice giant’ in South Carolina tonight."