Desdemona (moon)

Voyager 2 Stephen P. Synnott

Desdemona (also Uranus X) is the fifth and one of the smaller of the 27 known moons of the planet Uranus.

Discovery and designation

Desdemona was discovered on 13 January 1986 by the astronomer Stephen P. Synnott along with Rosalind and Belinda 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 6

Desdemona is the wife of the Venetian generals from Othello William Shakespeare's tragedy Othello, the Moor of Venice. She is the daughter of Brabantio, Othello against his blessing secretly marries, but this is betrayed by Iago; it attempts to Cassio in Othello misskreditieren to obtain the items. Through an intrigue succeeds Iago, Othello to convince them of a supposed infidelity of Desdemona with Cassio. Desdemona is then strangled by Othello in a furious jealousy. When Othello is later solved on the true facts, he stabs himself.

The name is derived Disdemona Desdemona or possibly ( " unhappy ", " ill-omened ", " persecuted by fate " ) from the Greek dysdaimôn.

All the moons of Uranus are named after characters from Shakespeare or Alexander 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

Desdemona Uranus orbits on a prograde, nearly perfectly circular orbit at an average distance of about 62,658 kilometers (about 2,452 Uranus radii ) from its center, ie 37,099 km above the cloud tops. The orbital eccentricity of 0.00013, the orbit is inclined 0.11252 ° relative to the equator of Uranus.

Desdemona is the third innermost moon of the Portia Group, which also includes Bianca, Cressida, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Belinda and Perdita belong. These moons have similar orbits and similar spectral properties.

The orbit of the next inner moon Cressida is on average only 892 km away from Cressida orbit, the moon of the next outer Juliet almost exactly 1700 km.

Desdemona is in the midst of two Uranus rings, inside of the current ε ( epsilon) - ring which is removed on average about 11,509 km from Desdemona orbit, and the inner edge of the outer ν ( Ny ) dust ring in the 3442 km distance.

Desdemona Uranus rotates in 11 hours, 22 minutes and 3.33 seconds. Since this is faster than the rotation of Uranus, does Desdemona seen from Uranus from the west, and set in the east.

Rotation

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

Physical Properties

Desdemona has an average diameter of 64.0 km. In the shots of the Voyager 2 probe Desdemona appeared as an elongated object with dimensions of 90 × 54 × 54 km, with 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. Desdemona 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 0.0116 m/s2, corresponding to about 1 ‰ of the earth. The average surface temperature of Desdemona is on between -184 ° and -209 ° C ( 89-64 K ) is estimated. In the spectrum of the surface of Desdemona 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.

It is possible that Desdemona collide within the next 100 million years with the almost 900 km from the inner Cressida, or 1700 km distant outer Juliet.

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 Desdemona could be clarified.

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