Cordelia is the innermost known moon of

Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It is a gaseous cyan-coloured ice giant. Most of the planet is made of water, ammonia, and methane in a Supercritical fluid, supercritical phase of matter, which astronomy calls "ice" or Volatile ( ...

. It was discovered from the images taken by ''

Voyager 2 ''Voyager 2'' is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, as a part of the Voyager program. It was launched on a trajectory towards the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and enabled further encounters with the ice giants (Uranus and ...

'' on January 20, 1986, and was given the temporary designation S/1986 U 7. It was not detected again until the

Hubble Space Telescope The Hubble Space Telescope (HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the Orbiting Solar Observatory, first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ...

observed it in 1997. Cordelia takes its name from the youngest daughter of Lear in

William Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's ''

King Lear ''The Tragedy of King Lear'', often shortened to ''King Lear'', is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It is loosely based on the mythological Leir of Britain. King Lear, in preparation for his old age, divides his ...

.'' It is also designated Uranus VI. Other than its orbit, size of 50 × 36 km, and

geometric albedo In astronomy, the geometric albedo of a celestial body is the ratio of its actual brightness as seen from the light source (i.e. at zero phase angle (astronomy), phase angle) to that of an ''idealized'' flat, fully reflecting, diffuse reflection, d ...

of 0.06, virtually nothing is known about it. In the ''Voyager 2'' images, Cordelia appears as an elongated object with its major axis pointing towards Uranus. The ratio of axes of Cordelia's prolate spheroid is . Cordelia acts as the inner shepherd satellite for Uranus's ε ring. Cordelia's orbit is within Uranus's synchronous orbit radius, and is therefore slowly decaying due to tidal deceleration. Cordelia is very close to a 5:3

orbital resonance In celestial mechanics, orbital resonance occurs when orbiting bodies exert regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually because their orbital periods are related by a ratio of small integers. Most commonly, this relation ...

with Rosalind.

Notes

References

External links

Cordelia Profile
b
NASA's Solar System Exploration

(by Scott S. Sheppard) {{DEFAULTSORT:Cordelia (Moon) Moons of Uranus 19860120 Moons with a prograde orbit King Lear

See also

Notes

References

External links