Cordelia (moon)

Cordelia is the innermost known 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 7.<ref name="IAUC 4168"/> It was not detected again until the Hubble Space Telescope observed it in 1997.<ref name="Karkoschka, Hubble 2001"/><ref name="IAUC 8194"/> Cordelia takes its name from the youngest daughter of Lear in William Shakespeare's King Lear. It is also designated Uranus VI.<ref name="Gazetteer"/>

Other than its orbit,<ref name="Jacobson 1998"/> size of 50 × 36 km,<ref name="Karkoschka, Voyager 2001" /> and geometric albedo of 0.06,<ref name="Karkoschka, Hubble 2001"/> virtually nothing is known about it. In the Voyager 2 images, Cordelia appears as an elongated object with its major axis pointing towards Uranus. The ratio of axes of Cordelia's prolate spheroid is Template:Val.<ref name="Karkoschka, Voyager 2001"/>

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

Cordelia is very close to a 5:3 orbital resonance with Rosalind.<ref name="Murray Thompson 1990"/>

See also

• Moons of Uranus

External links

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