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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]
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.
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 .
The pronunciation of the name Uranus preferred among astronomers is / ˈ jʊər ə n ə s / YOOR-ə-nəs, [1] with the long "u" of English and stress on the first syllable as in Latin Uranus, in contrast to / j ʊ ˈ r eɪ n ə s / yoo-RAY-nəs, with stress on the second syllable and a long a, though both are considered acceptable. [g]
Unlike most planetary moons, which are named from antiquity, all the moons of Uranus are named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope's work The Rape of the Lock. Neptune has 16 known moons ; the largest, Triton , accounts for more than 99.5 percent of all the mass orbiting the planet.
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.
Francisco is the innermost irregular satellite of Uranus. Francisco was discovered by Matthew J. Holman, et al. and Brett J. Gladman, et al. in 2003 from pictures taken in 2001 and given the provisional designation S/2001 U 3. Confirmed as Uranus XXII, it was named after a lord in William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. [8]