10th Largest Moon of Uranus - Belinda (10th Moon outwards from Uranus)

Belinda is an inner satellite of the planet Uranus.

Belinda is the 10th largest Moon of Uranus and the 53th largest moon in the Solar System currently known.

Discovery

Belinda was discovered by Stephen P. Synnott, who is an American astronomer and Voyager scientist, from the images taken by Voyager 2 on 13 January 1986.

Naming

The moon was given the temporary designation S/1986 U5.

Belinda the moon is named after Belinda, the heroine of Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock. Belinda was a beautiful young lady with wondrous hair, two locks of which hang gracefully in curls.

Alexander Pope based The Rape of the Lock on an actual incident in which a British nobleman, Lord Petre, cut off a lock of hair dangling tantalizingly from the head of the beautiful Arabella Fermor. Petre’s daring theft of the lock set off a battle royal between the Petre and Fermor families. John Caryll – a friend of Pope and of the warring families–persuaded the great writer to pen a literary work satirizing the absurdity and silliness of the dispute. The result was one of the greatest satirical poems in all of literature.

Stats

Diameter (mean): 80 km

Semi-major axis: 75,255 km

Orbital Period: 0.623 days

Orbit

Belinda takes as long to rotate on its axis as it does to make one orbit of Uranus; and therefore always keeps the same hemisphere pointed to Uranus.

Belinda belongs to a group of satellites called the Portia Group, which includes Portia, Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Rosalind, Cupid, Juliet and Perdita. These satellites have similar orbits and photometric properties.

Physical characteristics

Little is known about Belinda beyond its size of about 80 km, orbit and geometric albedo of about 0.08.

The Voyager 2 images show Belinda as an elongated object with its major axis pointing towards Uranus. The moon is very elongated, with its short axis 0.5 ± 0.1 times the long axis. Belinda's surface is grey in color.

Exploration Status

No close-up image of Belinda has been photographed.

No mission is planned in the foreseeable future.