Astronomy and Space

Ferdinand (moon)

Ferdinand, also known as Uranus XXIV and previously as S/2001 U 2, is the outermost known moon of Uranus. It was discovered on 13 August 2001 by Dan Milisavljevic, Matthew J. Holman, JJ Kavelaars, and Tommy Grav at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Named after a prince from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest, Ferdinand orbits Uranus at an average distance of 20.4 million km (12.7 million mi) and takes about 7.63 Earth years to complete one orbit. It follows a retrograde orbit, meaning it moves in the opposite direction to the planet's orbit around the Sun. Although Ferdinand has not been studied up close by any spacecraft, telescope observations suggest that it has an elongated shape with a diameter of about 20 km (12 mi) and a rotation period of either 12 or 24 hours.

Also on this shelf

See also

• ▸Beta Draconis
• ▸Cincinnati Music Hall
• ▸Comet

Uncatalogued shelf

Text from Wikipedia; plate via Wikimedia Commons. Text CC BY-SA 4.0; plate freely licensed (see Commons). Source record. Images and catalogue data are reproduced from open-access collections.