Titania (moon)

+ Titania 200px 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 kg
(5.9 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 largest moon of Uranus and the eighth largest moon in the Solar System.

 Discovery 
Titania was found on 11 January 1787 by William Herschel. He reported it and Oberon the same year.Herschel, William. 1787. An account of the discovery of two satellites revolving round the Georgian planet. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 77, pp. 125-129; and "On George's Planet and its satellites", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 78, pp. 364-378, 1788. He later reported four more moons, which turned out to be spurious.Herschel, William. 1798. On the discovery of four additional satellites of the Georgium Sidus; The retrograde motion of its old satellites announced; and the cause of their disappearance at certain distances from the planet explained: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 1798. 88: 47-79.

 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. Lassell had found Ariel and Umbriel the year before.http://adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/AN.../0034//0000169.000.html Adsabs.harvard.edu Retrieved on 05-19-07 He had  supported Herschel's 1847 naming scheme for the seven then-known moons of Saturn and had named his newly-found eighth moon Hyperion in 1848, in accordance with Herschel's naming scheme.

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. 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.

+ Named surface features on Titania Feature Named after Type Length (diameter), km Coordinates Belmont Chasma Belmont, Italy (The Merchant of Venice) Chasma 238  Messina Chasmata Messina, Italy (Much Ado About Nothing) 1,492  Rousillon Rupes Roussillon, France (All's Well That Ends Well) Rupes 402  Adriana Adriana (The Comedy of Errors) Crater 50  Bona Bona (Henry VI, Part 3) 51  Calphurnia Calpurnia Pisonis (Julius Caesar) 100  Elinor Eleanor of Aquitaine (The Life and Death of King John) 74  Gertrude Gertrude (Hamlet) 326  Imogen Imogen (Cymbeline) 28  Iras Iras (Antony and Cleopatra) 33  Jessica Jessica (The Merchant of Venice) 64  Katherine Katherine (Henry VIII) 75  Lucetta Lucetta (The Two Gentlemen of Verona) 58  Marina Marina (Pericles, Prince of Tyre) 40  Mopsa Mopsa (The Winter's Tale) 101  Phrynia Phrynia (Timon of Athens) 35  Ursula Ursula (Much Ado About Nothing) 135  Valeria Valeria (Coriolanus) 59 

 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.http://www.obspm.fr/actual/nouvelle/mar02/titania.en.shtml  Obspm.fr Retrieved on 05-19-07http://www.lesia.obspm.fr/~titania/results.html Lesia.obspm.fr Retrieved on 05-19-07

 Other websites 
 Titania Profile  by NASA's Solar System Exploration

 Notes 

Other websites
 USGS: Titania nomenclature

Category:Uranus' moons