Cordelia

Cordelia is the innermost of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 49,752 km from Uranus
diameter: 26 km
mass: N/A

Cordelia is a daughter of Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Cordelia appears to be the inner shepherding satellite for Uranus's Epsilon ring.

Cordelia and Ophelia orbit inside the synchronous orbit radius.

Ophelia

Ophelia is the second of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 53,764 km from Uranus
diameter: 32 km
mass: N/A

Ophelia is the daughter of Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Ophelia appears to be the outer shepherding satellite for Uranus's Epsilon ring.

Bianca

Bianca is the third of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 59,165 km from Uranus
diameter: 44 km
mass: N/A

Bianca is the sister of Katherine in Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Cressida

Cressida is the fourth of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 61,767 km from Uranus
diameter: 66 km
mass: N/A

Cressida is the daughter of Calchas in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Desdemona

Desdemona is the fifth of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 62,659 km from Uranus
diameter: 58 km
mass: N/A

Desdemona is the wife of Othello in Shakespeare's Othello.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Juliet

Juliet is the sixth of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 64,358 km from Uranus
diameter: 84 km
mass: N/A

Juliet is the tragic heroine in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Portia

Portia is the seventh of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 66,097 km from Uranus
diameter: 110 km
mass: N/A

Portia is a rich heiress in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Rosalind

Rosalind is the eighth of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 69,927 km from Uranus
diameter: 54 km
mass: N/A

Rosalind is a daughter of the banished Duke in Shakespeare's As You Like It.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Belinda

Belinda is the ninth of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 75,255 km from Uranus
diameter: 68 km
mass: N/A

Belinda is the heroine Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Puck

Puck is the tenth of Uranus' known satellites:

orbit: 86,006 km from Uranus
diameter: 154 km
mass: N/A

Puck is a mischievous fairy in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream.

Discovered by Voyager 2 in 1986.

Of the 10 Uranian moons discovered by Voyager 2, only Puck was discovered soon enough that the observation schedule could be adjusted to get images.

Puck and the other small moons are very dark (albedo less than 0.1).

Miranda

Miranda ("mi RAN duh") is the eleventh of Uranus's known satellites. Miranda is the innermost of Uranus'
large moons.

orbit: 129,850 km from Uranus
diameter: 472 km
mass: 6.3e19 kg

Miranda is a daughter of the magician Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Discovered by Kuiper in 1948.

Voyager 2 was forced to fly close to Uranus in order to get the boost it needed to go on to Neptune and due to the orientation of the whole system at almost right angles to the ecliptic only Miranda was approached closely. Before Voyager, of course, little was known about Miranda and as it is not the largest or in any other way remarkable, it probably would not have been chosen as the prime target at Uranus. Voyager's good luck held up, however, as Miranda turned out to be by far the most interesting.

Miranda is about half water ice and half rocky material.

Miranda's surface is all mixed up with heavily cratered terrain intermixed with weird grooves, valleys and cliffs (one over 15 kilometers high). At first, Voyager 2's images of Miranda were a mystery. Everyone had expected that Uranus' moons would show very little history of internal activity (like Callisto). Explaining the bizarre hitherto unknown terrain proved quite an embarrassment to those who had to do it on live TV. Their usual impressive and esoteric technical jargon gave out and they had to resort to using such terms as "chevron", "race track", and "layer cake" to describe Miranda's unique features.

It was initially thought that Miranda had been completely shattered and reassembled several times in its history, each time burying some parts of the original surface being and exposing some of the interior. Now, however, a more mundane explanation involving the upwelling of partially melted ices seems to be in favor.

Voyager 2 passed so close to Miranda and the light levels are so low there (almost 3 billion km from the Sun) that special measures had to be employed to avoid smearing the images. This was accomplished by rotating the entire spacecraft while the camera's shutter was open to compensate for its motion. The resulting images have the best resolution of the entire mission.

Ariel

Ariel ("AIR ee el") is the twelfth of Uranus's known satellites:

orbit: 190,930 km from Uranus
diameter: 1158 km
mass: 1.27e21 kg

Ariel is a mischievous airy spirit in Shakespeare's The Tempest.

Discovered by Lassell in 1851.

Ariel and Titania appear quite similar though Titania is 35% larger. All of Uranus' large moons are a mixture of about 40-50% water ice with the rest rock, a somewhat larger fraction of rock than Saturn's large moons such as Rhea.

Ariel's surface is a mixture of cratered terrain and systems of interconnected valleys hundreds of kilometers long (left, above) and more than 10 km deep. This is similar to, but much larger and more extensive than the situation on Titania. Some of the craters appear to be half-submerged. Obviously some sort of resurfacing processes have been at work. Some ridges in the middle of the valleys are interpreted as upwellings of ice.

Ariel may have been hot inside long ago, but it's cold now. Perhaps the valleys are cracks which formed when Ariel froze.

Umbriel

Umbriel ("UM bree el") is the thirteenth of Uranus's known satellites and the third largest:

orbit: 265,980 km from Uranus
diameter: 1170 km
mass: 1.27e21 kg

Umbriel is a character in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock.

Discovered by Lassell in 1851.

Umbriel and Oberon appear quite similar though Oberon is 35% larger. All of Uranus' large moons are a mixture of about 40-50% water ice with the rest rock, a somewhat larger fraction of rock than Saturn's large moons such as Rhea.

Umbriel's heavily cratered surface has probably been stable since its formation. It has far more and larger craters than do Ariel and Titania.

Umbriel is very dark; it reflects only about half as much light as Ariel, Uranus' brightest satellite.

Titania

Titania ("ti TAY nee uh") is the fourteenth and largest of Uranus's known satellites:

orbit: 436,270 km from Uranus
diameter: 1578 km
mass: 3.49e21 kg

Titania is the Queen of the Fairies and wife of Oberon in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream.

Discovered by Herschel in 1787.

Titania and Ariel appear quite similar though Ariel is 25% smaller. All of Uranus' large moons are a mixture of about 40-50% water ice with the rest rock, a somewhat larger fraction of rock than Saturn's large moons such as Rhea.

Titania's surface is a mixture of cratered terrain and systems of interconnected valleys hundreds of kilometers long. Some of the craters appear to be half-submerged. Obviously some sort of resurfacing processes have been at work.

One theory of Titania's history is that it was once hot enough to be liquid. The surface probably cooled first; when the interior froze it expanded forcing the surface to crack and resulting in the valleys that we see today.

Oberon

Oberon ("OH buh ron") is the outermost of Uranus's known satellites and second largest:

orbit: 583,420 km from Uranus
diameter: 1523 km
mass: 3.03e21 kg

Oberon is the King of the Fairies and husband of Titania in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream.

Discovered by Herschel in 1787.

Oberon and Umbriel appear quite similar though Oberon is 35% larger. All of Uranus' large moons are a mixture of about 40-50% water ice with the rest rock, a somewhat larger fraction of rock than Saturn's large moons such as Rhea.

Oberon's heavily cratered surface has probably been stable since its formation. It has far more and larger craters than do Ariel and Titania. Some of the craters have rays of ejecta similar to those seen on Callisto.

Some of the crater floors are dark, perhaps covered with darker material (dirty water?) that upwelled into the crater. Large faults are also seen across the entire southern hemisphere of Oberon. This indicates some geologic activity early in Oberon's history.