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Uranus's 28 natural satellites include 18 known regular moons, of which 13 are small inner moons. Further out are the larger five major moons of the planet: Miranda, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania, and Oberon. Orbiting at a much greater distance from Uranus are the ten known irregular moons.
Mab, or Uranus XXVI, [7] is an inner satellite of Uranus.It was discovered by Mark R. Showalter and Jack J. Lissauer in 2003 using the Hubble Space Telescope. [8] It was named after Queen Mab, a fairy queen from English folklore who is mentioned in William Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet.
S/2023 U 1 is the smallest and faintest natural satellite of Uranus known, with a diameter of around 8–12 km (5–7 mi). It was discovered on 4 November 2023 by Scott S. Sheppard using the 6.5-meter Magellan–Baade Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, Chile, and later announced on 23 February 2024. [1]
The two innermost moons, Cordelia and Ophelia, are shepherds of Uranus's ε ring, whereas the small moon Mab is a source of Uranus's outermost μ ring. [12] There may be two additional small (2–7 km in radius) undiscovered shepherd moons located about 100 km exterior to Uranus's α and β rings .
As the below graph demonstrates, the maximum absolute magnitude (total inherent brightness, abbreviated H) of moons we have detected around planets occurs at H = 18 for Jupiter, H = 17 for Saturn, H = 14 for Uranus, and H = 12 for Neptune. Smaller moons may (and most likely do) exist around each of these planets, but are currently undetectable ...
Miranda, also designated Uranus V, is the smallest and innermost of Uranus's five round satellites. It was discovered by Gerard Kuiper on 16 February 1948 at McDonald Observatory in Texas, and named after Miranda from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. [9] Like the other large moons of Uranus, Miranda orbits close to its planet's ...
Cupid is the smallest known inner Uranian satellite (apart from possibly Mab), crudely estimated to be only about 18 km in diameter. This and the dark surface made it too dim to be detected by the Voyager 2 cameras during its Uranus flyby in 1986. The orbit of Cupid is separated by only 863 km from the orbit of the larger moon Belinda.
These satellites have similar orbits and photometric properties. [9] Other than its orbit, [ 2 ] size of 128 × 64 km, [ 3 ] and geometric albedo of 0.08, [ 9 ] virtually nothing is known about it. Voyager 2 images show Belinda as an elongated object with its major axis pointing towards Uranus.