The name given to the observatory is crafted from the ancient Greek words for sky (Urani) and dromos (a specially-prepared place) and is the first point of creative thought. The Uranidrome includes twelve columns (like the twelve Olympian gods) carefully arranged for celestial advantage around the periphery of a plaza that boasts a 32-foot (Earth's surface gravity) diameter image of the Sun, complete with sunspots. Each of the planetary objects featured in the Uranidrome is inscribed to scale, relative to the Sun, on a black granite slab mounted on the column for that object. The granite also contains descriptive features for that object. The historically accepted ideogram for each planetary object is sculpted in inverted bas-relief form on the side of the column facing away from the plaza. No ideogram existed for the new class of solar system objects called trans-Neptunium objects, so one was created for that column.

Colored-coded tiles imbedded in the side of the Jupiter column and on the plaza in front of the column enable a person of any height to find the optimum location to stand and observe Polaris (North Star), a critical point in the sky when learning about the Earth's motion. The tile color that is at a person's eye level determines the color of the plaza tile on which that person should stand in order to see Polaris through the center of the circle of the steel sculpture atop the column