Miranda
What is Miranda?
Moons· Diameter 472 km. The smallest and innermost of Uranus's five large moons, known for a patchwork surface and Verona Rupes, a cliff about 20 km high.
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Orbit and size
| Diameter | 472 km |
|---|---|
| Distance from Uranus | 129,900 km |
| Orbit | 1.41 d |
| Note | 20-km cliff Verona Rupes |
Figures are representative approximations. Source: compiled from NASA and IAU public data.
Parent planet and sibling moons
Twelve minutes of falling from Verona Rupes
Verona Rupes is a cliff on Miranda about 20 km high. That is more than twice the height of Mount Everest, and it is thought to be the tallest known cliff in the solar system. It is named after Verona, the Italian city where Romeo and Juliet is set. Miranda's other features are also named after places in Shakespeare's plays; its three coronae are Arden, Elsinore and Inverness.
Miranda is small, so its gravity is very weak, about 0.8 percent of Earth's. Calculations show that a fall from the top of the cliff would last about 12 minutes. The speed would build up slowly, reaching only about 200 km/h at the bottom, roughly twice the speed of a car on a motorway.
In 2024 researchers at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in the United States re-examined the directions of faults in the Voyager images. They concluded that between 100 and 500 million years ago Miranda may have had an ocean about 100 km deep beneath its ice, and that part of it might still be liquid. Because Voyager 2 photographed only the southern hemisphere, no one has yet seen Miranda's northern half.
The moon in depth
Miranda is a moon of Uranus discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1948 and named after the heroine of Shakespeare's play The Tempest. At 472 km across it is the smallest of Uranus's five large moons. It orbits about 130,000 km from the planet and goes around once every 1.41 days. In 1986 Voyager 2 passed closer to Miranda than to any other moon of Uranus, so Miranda has the sharpest pictures of them all.
Those pictures surprised scientists. Right beside old, cratered ground lay areas marked with grooves in rings, like a racetrack. These features are called coronae. Huge faults and cliffs ran between them. The whole surface looked as if pieces of different landscapes had been stitched together.
At first, some scientists suggested that Miranda had been smashed apart by an impact and then pulled itself back together. Today another idea has more support. Long ago, while Miranda moved in step with a neighbouring moon, Uranus's gravity stretched and squeezed it, heating its insides. Warm ice then rose and twisted the crust. The 4.3-degree tilt of Miranda's orbit to Uranus's equator is thought to be a leftover sign of that time.
Frequently asked
- How big is Miranda?
- The diameter of Miranda is 472 km.
- How far is Miranda from Earth?
- The distance from uranus of Miranda is 129,900 km.
- What is notable about Miranda?
- The note of Miranda is 20-km cliff Verona Rupes.
- Which planet does Miranda orbit?
- Miranda orbits Uranus.
Related
Figures are representative approximations. Simulated positions use J2000 mean elements.