On this date in 1787 Oberon, a moon of Uranus, was discovered by William Herschel. 10 things you might not know about it.
- It’s the second largest moon of Uranus and the ninth largest in the solar system. Oberon is 8.4 times smaller than Earth.
- It orbits at about about 584,000 km from the planet – the farthest away of any of Uranus’s major moons. A significant part of its orbit is outside the planet’s magnetosphere.
- Oberon takes about 13 and a half days to orbit Uranus and is tidally locked with it.
- It was named after the king of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Herschel’s son, John.
- Its surface features are also named after characters in Shakespeare. Its largest known crater is Hamlet, and some of the others are MacBeth, Romeo, Caesar, Othello, Falstaff and Lear. An unidentified substance covers the floors of many of Oberon's craters. Astronomers don’t know what it is but theorise that it could be dirty Water which welled up after the impact. The surface in general is dark and reddish in colour.
- There’s also one mountain, which doesn’t seem to have a name, but is 4 miles (6 km) high.
- There could be more mountains and larger craters, since only 40% of the surface has been mapped, by Voyager 2 in 1986. There are no plans to send any other spacecraft anywhere near Oberon.
- Its composition is thought to be about half ice and half rock, and it might have a layer of liquid water between the mantle and the core. Oberon has no detectable atmosphere and no magnetic field.
- So there’s probably no life there, except in the imagination of various science fiction writers. In Treasure on Thunder Moon by Edmond Hamilton, Oberon is the home to a semi-sentient alien race of "Flame-Throwers". In Paolo Aresi's novel Oberon there is a secret Russian base there, and in the TV series Starhunter, there’s a maximum security prison there. In Doctor Who, there is an order of knights based there, called the Grand Order of Oberon.
- Oberon is mentioned in Pink Floyd's song Astronomy Domine.
New Year New Reading Challenge?
I can help. Here are links to books which meet potential criteria:
A title with three words
- Death and Faxes
- Killing Me Softly
- Settling the Score
- Secrets and Skies
- Over the Rainbow
- Closing the Circle
A title with six words
A book with a number in the title
A book with a colour in the title
Short story collections/A book with a green cover
A book published in the last year/during lockdown
A book you can finish in a day/A book under 200 pages
A book featuring characters from a deck of cards
A Book set during Christmas
A book with a place in the title
A Debut novel
A book with a plant or flower on the cover/A book about siblings
A book with a female villain or criminal
Includes space travel
Features Royalty
Books featuring skiing or snowboarding
A book with the Olympic games in it
A book with a bird in the title
A book featuring a secret society
A book featuring time travel/alternative dimensions
Raiders Trilogy:
Books featuring superheroes
Books featuring ghosts
From an Indie Publisher/Self published/An author you've not read before/A female author/A genre you wouldn't normally read/A book outside your comfort zone/A book by an author with your initials and your initials are JH
All of them!
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