Abstract
Sir William Herschel discovered the ice giant planet Uranus in the spring of 1781. Within 6 years, he had discovered two of its moons, Titania and Oberon. In 1851, Johann Galle spotted Neptune, and just 17 days later William Lassel found its largest attendant, Triton. It seemed that the outer Solar System was teeming with moons. In fact, it is. The moons of the outer Solar System will provide many targets for human adventurers to study, explore and play upon.
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Notes
- 1.
Galle based his discovery on a mathematical prediction by the famous French mathematician Urbain le Verrier.
- 2.
As of this writing, the Cassini spacecraft continues to discover moons at Saturn on a fairly regular basis, especially ones embedded within the ring system.
- 3.
Titania was the Queen of the Fairies in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The moons of Uranus are all named for characters in Shakespeare’s plays.
- 4.
See On the Long-term Dynamical Evolution of the Main Satellites of Uranus by Karatekin and Noyelles, Royal Observatory of Belgium, published by AAS, 2013.
- 5.
The Tempest, end of Act 1, Scene 5.
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Carroll, M. (2015). Ariel, Miranda and Triton – Moons of Uranus and Neptune. In: Living Among Giants. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10674-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10674-8_8
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