History UsefulNotes / TheMoonsOfUranus

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Geological features on Titania and Oberon share the same naming conventions as Miranda, though names of individuals for craters can be drawn from any Shakespearian play. Titania is limited to female characters, Oberon to male.

These two are the largest moons of Uranus, with diameters of almost 1500 km, rivaling [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Saturn's Rhea]]. They are named for the Queen and King of the Fairies (respectively) in ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. They are large enough to have tiny traces of atmosphere and be suspected of hiding subsurface oceans deep on the border between ice and rock. That makes these iceballs in the middle of blackness possibly not boring and possibly not dead.

Geological features on Titania and Oberon share the same naming conventions as Miranda, though names of individuals for craters can be drawn from any Shakespearian play.

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[[caption-width-right:350:Umbriel (left) and Ariel (right)]]

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[[caption-width-right:350:Titania (left) and Oberon (right)]]

These medium-sized moons (1100-1200 km in diameter) are very similar in all except color. They are named for two characters from ''The Rape of the Lock.'' Ariel is a very shiny object, Umbriel is dark, albeit with a bright, shiny crater called Wunda on its equator. It's likely that they have silicate cores, but subsurface oceans are unlikely. In all other aspects, they are boring iceballs in the middle of blackness, dead as a doornail.

This moon, barely large enough to be a ball, is unusual in the high variability of its terrain. It is named for Prospero's daughter in ''Theatre/TheTempest''. Miranda's surface has patchwork regions of broken terrain indicating intense geological activity in the moon's past, and is criss-crossed by huge canyons. A discredited theory claims that Miranda was [[EarthShatteringKaboom shattered]] and then re-coalesced into its current clumsy shape; scientists then thought it was a tidally-heated ocean moon, like [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfJupiter Europa]] and [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Enceladus]], in the past, then froze over, causing its ice crust to crack and break. The current theory is that Miranda is actually still in the middle of formation, with lighter substances rising to the surface, while the heavier elements are sinking towards the core, providing a snapshot of world formation. Nowadays it is, in all aspects, a boring iceball in the middle of blackness, dead as a doornail.

[[caption-width-right:283:The biggest ones]]

These two are the largest moons of Uranus, with diameters of almost 1500 km, rivaling [[UsefulNotes/TheMoonsOfSaturn Saturn's Rhea]]. The are named for the Queen and King of the Fairies in ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''. They are large enough to have tiny traces of atmosphere and be suspected of hiding subsurface oceans deep on the border between ice and rock. That makes these iceballs in the middle of blackness possibly not boring and possibly not dead.

Miranda is home to the tallest cliff in the Solar System, Verona Rupes. Craters are named after other individuals featured in ''The Tempest'', and other geological features are named after locations featured throughout Shakesheare's plays.