Moons of Uranus

The natural satellites orbiting Uranus, comprising five major moons and numerous smaller inner and irregular moons. Their names come largely from characters in Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Titania: The largest moon of Uranus, discovered by William Herschel in 1787. Titania is the largest member of Uranus’s five major moons.
Orbital resonance: A gravitational relationship in which orbiting bodies exert regular, repeating influences on one another. Resonances shape the paths of some inner Uranian moons.
Voyager 2: A NASA spacecraft launched in 1977 that conducted the only close flyby survey of Uranus. Its 1986 encounter provided nearly all detailed spacecraft images of Uranus’s moons.
William Herschel: A German-born British astronomer who discovered Uranus in 1781 and two of its moons. Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon in 1787, beginning the known moon catalogue.
Uranus orbiter and probe: A proposed NASA mission concept for orbiting Uranus and deploying an atmospheric probe. A dedicated mission could map moons repeatedly and measure their composition and interiors.
Oberon: The outermost and second-largest of Uranus’s five major moons. Oberon completes the pair of large moons discovered by Herschel in 1787.
Tidal heating: Internal heating caused by changing gravitational forces that flex a body's interior. Tidal forces may help account for geological activity on some Uranian satellites.
Miranda's Verona Rupes: A large cliff on Miranda, among the highest known cliffs in the Solar System. This landmark illustrates the extreme relief visible in Voyager 2 images of Miranda.
William Lassell: A British astronomer who discovered Neptune’s moon Triton and two major moons of Uranus. Lassell discovered Ariel and Umbriel in 1851.
Subsurface ocean: A liquid-water layer beneath the solid surface of an icy planetary body. Whether some Uranian moons contain internal oceans remains poorly constrained.

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