Cupid is an inner satellite 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 by

Mark R. Showalter Mark Robert Showalter (born December 5, 1957) is a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute. He is the discoverer of six moons and three planetary rings. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's Planetary Data System Rings Node, a co-inv ...

and Jack J. Lissauer in 2003 using 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 ...

. It was named after a character 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 play ''

Timon of Athens ''The Life of Tymon of Athens'', often shortened to ''Timon of Athens'', is a play written by William Shakespeare and likely also Thomas Middleton in about 1606. It was published in the ''First Folio'' in 1623. Timon of Athens (person), Timon ...

''. 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 ''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 ...

'' 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 Belinda is a feminine given name of unknown origin, apparently coined from Italian ''bella'', meaning "beautiful". Alternatively it may be derived from the Old High German name ''Betlinde'', which possibly meant "bright serpent" or "bright lind ...

. Unlike Mab and

Perdita Perdita (Italian for "loss", from Latin for "lost woman"), may refer to: People *Perdita (given name), the history and usage of the name *Perdita Barran, English chemist * Perdita Buchan (born 1940), Anglo-American author *Perdita Felicien (born ...

, two Uranian satellites also discovered in 2003, it does not seem to be perturbed. Despite this, it has the least stable orbit of Uranus's inner moons—it is likely to collide with Belinda in the next 100,000–10 million years, due to resonance interactions that cause the smaller Cupid to drift into a more dangerous orbit over this timescale. Cupid is at most 500 million years old. Following its discovery, Cupid was given the temporary designation S/2003 U 2. It is also designated Uranus XXVII.

References

External links

Hubble Uncovers Smallest Moons Yet Seen Around Uranus
nbsp;– Hubble Space Telescope news release (25 September 2003) {{DEFAULTSORT:Cupid (Moon) Moons of Uranus 20030825 Moons with a prograde orbit