Miranda (moon)

Miranda (moon)

Miranda is the smallest and innermost of Uranus's five major moons.

It was discovered by Gerard Kuiper on February 16, 1948 at McDonald Observatory. It was named after Miranda from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest by Kuiper in his report of the discovery. The adjectival form of the name is Mirandan. It is also designated Uranus V.

So far the only close-up images of Miranda are from the Voyager 2 probe, which made observations of the moon during its Uranus flyby in January 1986. During the flyby the southern hemisphere of the moon was pointed towards the Sun so only that part was studied. Miranda shows more evidence of past geologic activity than any of the other Uranian satellites.