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The largest of Uranus's satellites, Titania, has a radius of only 788.9 km (490.2 mi), or less than half that of the Moon, but slightly more than Rhea, the second-largest satellite of Saturn, making Titania the eighth-largest moon in the Solar System.
For the giant planets, the "radius" is defined as the distance from the center at which the atmosphere reaches 1 bar of atmospheric pressure. [ 11 ] Because Sedna and 2002 MS 4 have no known moons, directly determining their mass is impossible without sending a probe (estimated to be from 1.7x10 21 to 6.1×10 21 kg for Sedna [ 12 ] ).
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 ]
Alan Stern calls these satellite planets, although the term major moon is more common. The smallest natural satellite that is gravitationally rounded is Saturn I Mimas (radius 198.2 ± 0.4 km). This is smaller than the largest natural satellite that is known not to be gravitationally rounded, Neptune VIII Proteus (radius 210 ± 7 km).
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 .
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]
Retrograde irregular satellites of Uranus. Ferdinand is the most distant known satellite of Uranus. It follows a retrograde, modestly inclined but highly eccentric orbit. The diagram illustrates the orbital parameters of the retrograde irregular satellites of Uranus (in polar co-ordinates) with the eccentricity of the orbits represented by the segments extending from the pericentre to the ...
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.