|
Credit & Copyright: The Voyager Project,
NASA
Explanation:
British astronomer
Sir William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon in 1787,
210 years ago today.
He wasn't
reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream though,
he was making the first telescopic observations of moons of
the planet Uranus (a planet which he himself
discovered in 1781).
On January 24, 1986
NASA's robot explorer Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to visit
the remote Uranian system.
Above is
Voyager's highest resolution picture of Titania, Uranus' largest
moon - a composite of two images recorded from a distance
of 229,000 miles.
The icy, rocky world is seen to be covered with impact
craters.
A prominent system of fault valleys, some nearly 1,000 miles long,
are visible as trench-like features
near the terminator (shadow line).
Deposits of highly reflective material which may represent frost
can be seen along the sun-facing valley walls.
The large impact crater near the top,
known as Gertrude, is about
180 miles across.
At the bottom the 60 mile wide fault valley,
Belmont Chasma, cuts into crater Ursula.
Titania itself is 1,000 miles in diameter.
|
January February March April May June July August September October November December |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings, and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris. Specific rights apply.
A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: titania
Publications with words: titania
See also: