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Concept
Umbriel (moon)
Summary
Umbriel ˈʌmbriəl is a moon of Uranus discovered on October 24, 1851, by William Lassell. It was discovered at the same time as Ariel and named after a character in Alexander Pope's 1712 poem The Rape of the Lock. Umbriel consists mainly of ice with a substantial fraction of rock, and may be differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. The surface is the darkest among Uranian moons, and appears to have been shaped primarily by impacts. However, the presence of canyons suggests early endogenic processes, and the moon may have undergone an early endogenically driven resurfacing event that obliterated its older surface.
Covered by numerous impact craters reaching in diameter, Umbriel is the second most heavily cratered satellite of Uranus after Oberon. The most prominent surface feature is a ring of bright material on the floor of Wunda crater. This moon, like all moons of Uranus, probably formed from an accretion disk that surrounded the planet just after its formation. The Uranian system has been studied up close only once, by the spacecraft Voyager 2 in January 1986. It took several images of Umbriel, which allowed mapping of about 40% of the moon's surface.
Umbriel, along with another Uranian satellite, Ariel, was discovered by William Lassell on October 24, 1851. Although William Herschel, the discoverer of Titania and Oberon, claimed at the end of the 18th century that he had observed four additional moons of Uranus, his observations were not confirmed and those four objects are now thought to be spurious.
All of Uranus's moons are named after characters created by William Shakespeare or Alexander Pope. The names of all four satellites of Uranus then known were suggested by John Herschel in 1852 at the request of Lassell. Umbriel is the "dusky melancholy sprite" in Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, and the name suggests the Latin umbra, meaning shadow. The moon is also designated Uranus II.
Umbriel orbits Uranus at the distance of about , being the third farthest from the planet among its five major moons.
Official source
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