Largest Moon of Uranus - Titania (17th Moon outwards from Uranus)

Uranus has 27 known moons, all of which are named after characters from the works of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope.

Titania is the largest of the moons of Uranus and the eighth largest moon in the Solar System

Discovery

Titania was spotted by Sir William Herschel on January 11, 1787, six years after he had discovered the planet itself.



Naming

The responsibility for naming was taken by John Herschel, son of the discoverer of Uranus. Herschel, instead of assigning names from Greek mythology, named the moons after magical spirits in English literature. Titania is named after the queen of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Stats

Diameter: 1,577 km

Semi-major axis: 435,910 km

Orbital Period: 8.71 days

Orbit

Titania orbits Uranus at the distance of about 436,000 km, being the second farthest from the planet among its five major moons. Its orbital period is around 8.7 days, coincident with its rotational period. In other words, Titania is a synchronous or tidally locked satellite, with one face always pointing toward the planet.

Formation

Titania probably formed from an accretion disk that surrounded the planet just after its formation.

Titania consists of approximately equal amounts of ice and rock, and is likely differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. A layer of liquid water may be present at the core–mantle boundary. The surface of Titania, which is relatively dark and slightly red in color, appears to have been shaped by both impacts and endogenic processes.

Atmosphere

The presence of carbon dioxide on the surface suggests that Titania may have a tenuous seasonal atmosphere of CO2. Other gases like nitrogen or methane are unlikely to be present, because the moon's weak gravity could not prevent them escaping into the space.

Exploration Status

So far the only close-up images of Titania have been from the Voyager 2 probe, which photographed the moon during its flyby of Uranus in January 1986.

No other spacecraft has ever visited the Uranian system or Titania, and no mission is planned in the foreseeable future.