Titania (moon) facts for kids

Titania

Click image for description
Discovery
Discovered by	William Herschel
Discovered in	January 11, 1787
Orbital characteristics
Semi-major axis	435,910 km
Mean radius	436,300 km
Eccentricity	0.0011
Orbital period	8.706 d
Inclination	0.340° (to Uranus' equator)
Is a moon of	Uranus
Physical characteristics
Mean diameter	1577.8 km (0.1237 Earths)
Surface area	7,820,000 km²
Volume	2,057,000,000 km³
Mass	3.526×1021 kg (5.9×10−4 Earths)
Mean density	1.72 g/cm³
Surface gravity	0.378 m/s2 (~0.039 g)
Escape velocity	0.77 km/s
Rotation period	synchronous
Axial tilt	zero
Albedo	0.27
Apparent magnitude	13.73
Surface temp.	min mean max  ? K ~60 K  ? K
Atmospheric pressure

Titania is the biggest moon of Uranus and the eighth biggest moon in the Solar System.

Discovery

Titania was found on January 11, 1787 by William Herschel. He reported it and Oberon the same year. He later reported four more moons, which turned out to be spurious.

Name and pronunciation

The names of Titania and the other four moons of Uranus then known were suggested by Herschel's son John Herschel in 1852 at the request of William Lassell, who had found Ariel and Umbriel the year before. Lassell had earlier supported Herschel's 1847 naming scheme for the seven then-known moons of Saturn and had named his newly-found eighth moon Hyperion in accordance with Herschel's naming scheme in 1848.

All of the moons of Uranus are named for characters from Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. Titania was named after Titania, the Queen of the Faeries in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Shakespeare's character's name is pronounced but the moon is often pronounced by analogy with the familiar chemical element titanium.

It is also designated Uranus III.

Physical characteristics

So far the only close-up images of Titania are from the Voyager 2 probe, which photographed the moon during its Uranus flyby in January, 1986. At the time of the flyby the southern hemisphere of the moon was pointed towards the Sun so only it was studied.

Although what its interior is made up of is uncertain, one model suggests that Titania is made of about 50% water ice, 30% silicate rock, and 20% methane-related organic compounds.

Surface features

Surface features on Titania are named for characters from plays by William Shakespeare. Chasms on Titania are called chasmata. Escarpments here are called rupes. They are named after the places where plays by Shakespeare happen. craters on Titania are named after female characters in the plays.

A major surface feature is a huge canyon that dwarfs the scale of the Grand Canyon on Earth and is in the same class as the Valles Marineris on Mars or Ithaca Chasma on Saturn's moon Tethys.

Occultation

On September 8, 2001, Titania occulted a faint star; this was a chance to both refine its diameter and ephemeris, and to detect any extant atmosphere. The data revealed no atmosphere to a surface pressure of 0.03 microbars; if it exists, it would have to be far thinner than that of Triton or Pluto.

Images for kids

• 

  Size comparison of Earth, the Moon, and Titania.

• 

  Voyager 2's highest-resolution image of Titania shows moderately cratered plains, enormous rifts and long scarps. Near the bottom, a region of smoother plains including the crater Ursula is split by the graben Belmont Chasma.

• 

  Titania with surface features labeled. The south pole is situated close to the unidentified bright crater below and left of the crater Jessica.

• 

  Messina Chasma—a large canyon on Titania

See also

In Spanish: Titania (satélite) para niños