Ophelia (moon)

Ophelia is a moon of Uranus. It was discovered from the images taken by Voyager 2 on January 20, 1986, and was given the temporary designation S/1986 U 8.<ref name="IAUC 4168" /> It was not seen again until the Hubble Space Telescope recovered it in 2003.<ref name="Karkoschka, Hubble 2001" /><ref name="IAUC 8194" /> Ophelia was named after the daughter of Polonius, Ophelia, in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet. It is also designated Uranus VII.<ref name="Gazetteer" />

Other than its orbit,<ref name="Jacobson 1998" /> size of 54 × 38 km,<ref name="Karkoschka, Voyager 2001" /> and geometric albedo of 0.065,<ref name="Karkoschka, Hubble 2001" /> virtually nothing is known about it. In Voyager 2, images Ophelia appears as an elongated object, with its major axis pointing towards Uranus. The ratio of axes of the Ophelia's prolate spheroid is 0.7 ± 0.3.<ref name="Karkoschka, Voyager 2001" />

Ophelia acts as the outer shepherd satellite for Uranus's ε ring.<ref name="Esposito 2002" /> The orbit of Ophelia is within the synchronous orbit radius of Uranus, and is therefore slowly decaying due to tidal forces.<ref name="Karkoschka, Voyager 2001" />

See also

• Moons of Uranus

External links

• Ophelia Profile by NASA's Solar System Exploration
• Uranus' Known Satellites (by Scott S. Sheppard)