Portia (moon) facts for kids
 |
|
| Discovery | |
|---|---|
| Discovered by | Stephen P. Synnott / Voyager 2 |
| Discovery date | January 3, 1986 |
| Orbital characteristics | |
| 66,097.265 ± 0.050 km | |
| Eccentricity | 0.00005 ± 0.00008 |
| 0.5131959201 ± 0.0000000093 d | |
| Inclination | 0.05908 ± 0.039° (to Uranus' equator) |
| Satellite of | Uranus |
| Physical characteristics | |
| Dimensions | 156 × 126 × 126 km |
|
Mean radius
|
70 ± 4 km |
| ~57,000 km² | |
| Volume | ~1,300,000 km³ |
| Mass | ~1.7×1018 kg |
|
Mean density
|
~1.3 g/cm³ (assumed) |
| ~0.023 m/s2 | |
| ~0.058 km/s km/s | |
| synchronous | |
| zero | |
| Albedo | 0.08 ± 0.01 |
| Temperature | ~64 K |
Portia is a closer moon to Uranus. It was found from the images taken by Voyager 2 on 1986-01-03, and was given the designation S/1986 U 1. The moon is named after Portia, the heroine of William Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice. It is also designated Uranus XII.
Portia is the second biggest closer moon of Uranus after Puck. The Portian orbit, which lies inside Uranus' synchronous orbital radius, is slowly shrinking due to tidal deceleration. The moon will one day either break up into a planetary ring or hit Uranus.
It heads a group of moons called Portia Group, which includes Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Rosalind, Cupid, Belinda and Perdita. These moons have similar orbits and photometric properties.
Little is known about Portia beyond its size of about 140 km, orbit, and geometric albedo of about 0.08.
In the Voyager 2 images, Portia appears as a stretched object whose major axis points towards Uranus. The ratio of axises of the Portia's prolate spheroid is 0.8 ± 0.1. Its surface is grey in color. Observations with Hubble Space Telescope and large terrestrial telescopes found water ice absorption features in the spectrum of Portia.
Images for kids
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Portia seen on January 23, 1986.
See also
In Spanish: Porcia (satélite) para niños
