Cordelia is the
innermost known moon of
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. Its name is a reference to the Greek god of the sky, Uranus (Caelus), who, according to Greek mythology, was the great-grandfather of Ares (Mars), grandfather of Zeus (Jupiter) and father of Cronu ...
. It was discovered from the images taken by ''
Voyager 2
''Voyager 2'' is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. As a part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, ''Voyager 1'', on ...
'' 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 (often referred to as HST or Hubble) is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most ver ...
observed it in 1997.
Cordelia takes its name from the youngest daughter of Lear in
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare ( 26 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 natio ...
's ''
King Lear.'' It is also designated Uranus VI.
Other than its orbit,
radius of 20 km
and
geometric albedo of 0.08
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 0.7 ± 0.2.
Cordelia acts as the inner
shepherd satellite for Uranus'
ε ring.
Cordelia's orbit is within Uranus' synchronous orbit radius, and is therefore slowly decaying due to
tidal deceleration.
Cordelia is very close to a 5:3
orbital resonance with
Rosalind.
See also
*
Moons of Uranus
References
Explanatory notes
Citations
External links
Cordelia Profileb
NASA's Solar System Exploration(by
Scott S. Sheppard)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cordelia (Moon)
Moons of Uranus
19860120
Moons with a prograde orbit
King Lear