Uranus' Moons


Titania ( Uranus III)
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
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:-
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. Titania's surface is clearly relatively young (though older than some such as Enceladus); 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( Uranus IV)
Oberon ("OH buh ron") is the outermost of Uranus' large satellites and the second largest.

Orbit:583,420 km from Uranus
Diameter:1523 km
Mass:3.03e21 kg
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 Surface:-
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.

  • Diificulties:-
    1-Why have Oberon and Umbriel apparently been inactive throughout their histories while Ariel and Titania have been at least partially resurfaced?

    2-Why are Ariel and Titania different from Umbriel and Oberon?

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    Last Modified : 5 Sep. 2001
    Created By#C0115361 Team