Contains:  Solar system body or event
Moons of Uranus, Bruce Rohrlach

Moons of Uranus

Moons of Uranus, Bruce Rohrlach

Moons of Uranus

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Description

Had fun photographing Uranus the other night. Whilst the 7th planet from the sun was just a blurry, shimmering aqua-green fuzz-ball on screen using the Newtonian, the ability to detect the 4 largest moons of Uranus was what blew my mind. These are not significantly large pieces of rock at all, and given their distance from earth (~1.8 billion km away at this point in time with Uranus nearing opposition) I was very happy to see them on screen when I dialed up the gain setting (even though that over-exposed Uranus). The 4 largest of Uranus’s 27 moons are Oberon (1522 km diameter), Titania (1577 km), Umbriel (1169 km) and Ariel (1157 km). In the original ASI224mc images with higher gain settings, Oberon and Titania occupied around 5 pixels, Umbriel around 4 pixels and Ariel around 3 pixels. Miranda (at 471 km diameter) was a bit too small to see on the night. The smallest of Uranus’s 27 moons is Cordelia at 42 km diameter (about the radius of Melbourne).

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Moons of Uranus, Bruce Rohrlach