Everything about Oberon Moon totally explained
Oberon (
oe'-bər-on) is the outermost of the major
moons of the planet
Uranus.
With a mean radius of about 760 km., Oberon is the second largest moon of Uranus, as well as the
tenth largest moon in the solar system.
Discovery
It was discovered on
January 11,
1787 by
William Herschel, in the same year that he reported
Titania. He would later report four more satellites, which would turn out to be spurious. Remarkably, for nearly fifty years following their discovery, Titania and Oberon wouldn't be observed by any other instrument than William Herschel's. However, the moon can be seen from
Earth with a present-day amateur telescope.
Name
All of the moons of Uranus are named for characters from
Shakespeare or
Alexander Pope. Oberon was named after
Oberon, the King of the Fairies in
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The name "Oberon" and the names of all four satellites of Uranus then known were suggested by Herschel's son
John Herschel in 1852 at the request of
William Lassell, who had discovered
Ariel and
Umbriel the year before. Lassell had earlier endorsed Herschel's 1847 naming scheme for the seven then-known satellites of Saturn and had named his newly-discovered eighth satellite
Hyperion in accordance with Herschel's naming scheme in 1848. The adjectival form of the name is
Oberonian.
Oberon is also now designated . It was initially called simply "the second satellite of Uranus"; in 1848 it was given the designation by William Lassell, although he sometimes also used William Herschel's numbering (where Titania and Oberon are II and IV).
Physical features
So far the only close-up images of Oberon 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 the northern hemisphere couldn't be studied.
Although its interior make-up is uncertain, one model suggests that Oberon is composed of roughly 50% water ice, 30%
silicate rock, and 20%
methane-related
carbon/
nitrogen compounds. It has an old, heavily cratered, and icy surface which shows little evidence of internal activity other than some unknown dark material that apparently covers the floors of many craters. However, some large faults can be seen across the southern hemisphere, which indicates some internal activity early in its life.
So far, scientists have recognised a few types of geological features on Oberon:
craters,
chasmata, and
mountains. In fact one such mountain rises about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) above the Oberonian surface.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Oberon Moon'.
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