Planet-watchers with binoculars have a good opportunity to spot the seventh world from the Sun—Uranus—on August 1-2, when it's located only 1.5° north of the red planet Mars. (For comparison, that angle is about three times the width of a full Moon, or a little less than the width of your thumb, held at arm's length, and easily within the same field in a standard pair of binoculars.)
At 2.9 billion kilometers (1.8 billion miles) away, Uranus is a tiny, steadily shining, greenish disk just on the edge of naked-eye visibility on moonless nights, but binoculars will help make it easier to spot. It was discovered telescopically in 1781 by William Herschel, who thought that it was a comet. He changed his mind when he didn't observe the coma or tail characteristic of comets, and concluded that he had found a planet. Expressing his desire to name it after his patron, King George III, he proposed calling it "Georgium Sidus" (George's Star). This had little support among astronomers outside of England, who argued that the naming should follow the established convention of drawing from classical myth. However, both in keeping with that tradition and breaking from it, the new planet was named after a Greek deity rather than being given a Roman name like the other planets. That name—Ouranos, after the personification of the sky—evolved into the name used today...which many people still can't decide how to pronounce.