| Titania [ti tA' nE uh] the fourteenth and
largest of Uranus's known
satellites
Titania has a diameter of 982
miles (1,578 kilometers), and orbits Uranus at a
distance of 270,924 miles (436,270 kilometers).
It was discovered by Sir
William Herschel in
1787, and named for the Queen of the Fairies and
wife of Oberon in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's
Dream.
Like the other large moons of
Uranus, Titania is a mixture of about 40-50%
water ice, with the rest being rock. Its surface
is a mixture of cratered terrain and systems of
interconnected valleys hundreds of miles long.
Some of the craters appear to be half-submerged,
but further study is needed to be certain. It is
possible that Titania was once hot enough to be
liquid. The surface probably cooled first; when
the interior froze it expanded, forcing the
surface to crack and resulting in the valleys
seen today.
Uranus
William Herschel
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