Belinda (moon)

Voyager 2 Stephen P. Synnott

Belinda (also Uranus XIV) is the tenth and one of the medium of the 27 known moons of the planet Uranus.

Discovery and designation

Belinda was discovered on 13 January 1986 by the astronomer Stephen P. Synnott together with Desdemona and Rosalind on photographic images of the Voyager 2 spacecraft. The discovery was announced on 16 January 1986 by the International Astronomical Union ( IAU); the moon first received the provisional designation S/1986 U 5

Belinda is the main female character from Alexander Pope's epic poem The Rape of the Lock. The poem has a hint of parody and Belinda is based on the Arabella Fermor contemporaries (1696-1737) and her admirer Lord Robert Petre ( 7th Baron Petre ) ( 1689-1713 ), who both came from aristocratic Catholic families in Anglican England. Petre, the Arabella passionately coveted, had cut off a lock of her hair without permission. The following thereon dispute led to a break between the two families. In the poem, the loss of a lock of hair Belinda meets deep, an allusion to how fragile beauty. The names for the moons Ariel and Umbriel were also taken from this poem.

All the moons of Uranus are named after characters from William Shakespeare or Pope. The first four moons discovered Uranus ( Oberon, Titania, Ariel, Umbriel ) were proposed by John Herschel, the son of Uranus discoverer William Herschel, named. Later, the tradition of naming was retained.

Web properties

Orbit

Belinda Uranus orbits on a prograde, nearly perfectly circular orbit at an average distance of about 75,255 kilometers (about 2,944 Uranus radii ) from its center, ie 49,697 km above the cloud tops. The orbital eccentricity of 0.00007, the orbit is inclined 0.03063 ° relative to the equator of Uranus.

Belinda is the achtinnerste the Portia Group, which also includes Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid and include Perdita. These moons have similar orbits and similar spectral properties.

The orbit of the next inner moon Cupid is on average just 864 km from Belinda's orbit, the moon of the next outer Perdita 1161 km.

Belinda is in the midst of two Uranus rings, the inner current ν ( Ny ) dust ring whose outer edge is removed on average about 5356 km from Belinda orbit, and the inner edge of the outer μ ( My) dust ring in 10.75 thousand kilometers away.

Belinda Uranus rotates in 14 hours, 57 minutes and 52.77 seconds. Since this is faster than the rotation of Uranus, is Belinda seen from Uranus from the west, and set in the east. As Belinda moved close to the synchronous orbit, it follows that Belinda for a fictitious observer only good every 6.5 days Uranus on the horizon once or goes down, which means that they Uranus 3.25 days in the sky can be seen.

Rotation

It is believed that Belinda synchronously rotates and its axis having an inclination of 0 °.

Physical Properties

Belinda has an average diameter of 80.6 km. In the shots of the Voyager 2 probe Belinda appeared as strongly elongated object with dimensions of 128 × 64 × 64 km, wherein the longitudinal axis is aligned with Uranus.

Their average density is much lower than the density of the Earth at 1.3 g/cm3 and points out that the moon is composed mainly of water ice. Belinda has a very low albedo of 0.08, i.e., 8 % of the incident solar light is reflected from the surface. It is thus a very dark celestial bodies. On its surface, the gravitational acceleration is 0.0149 m/s2, corresponding to about 1 ‰ of the earth. The average surface temperature of Belinda is estimated to be between -184 ° and -209 ° C ( 89-64 K). In the spectrum of the surface of Belinda appears gray.

Otherwise, not much is known about this moon since images of the probe came at a great distance and therefore have a low resolution.

Research

Since the flyby of the Voyager 2 spacecraft, the Uranus system of ground-based observations as well as the Hubble Space Telescope has been studied intensively. The orbital parameters of Belinda could be clarified.

Pictures of Belinda (moon)

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