Featured planetary moon
Miranda
A patchwork moon assembled from cliffs, grooves and broken terrain.
Miranda’s surface looks unusually varied for such a small body. Large coronae, ridges and fault scarps suggest a complicated history of internal activity and resurfacing.
- Orbit representation
- Representative mean elements
- Surface
- derived map
Reference measurements
The numbers that shape this world
- Mean radius
- 235.8 km
- Mean orbital distance
- 129,846 kmSemi-major axis around the parent body.
- Orbital period
- 1.413 days
- Eccentricity
- 0.001
- Inclination
- 4.4°Uranus equator at J2000
- Rotation
- Tidally locked
World portrait
Geology out of proportion to size
Miranda demonstrates why radius alone does not predict visual complexity. Its compact body preserves some of the most dramatic tectonic relief seen among the classical moons.
System geometry
Miranda in motion around Uranus
Miranda travels at a mean orbital distance of 129,846 km and completes a circuit in 1.413 days. Its eccentricity of 0.001 and 4.4° inclination are read against Uranus equator at J2000. Synchronous rotation keeps the same hemisphere broadly oriented toward the parent body.
Representation notes
What Explore is showing
JPL fitted mean elements describe general orbit shape and orientation; they are not an accurate ephemeris.
Reviewed official partial imagery prepared as a 1K display texture. Unobserved areas are softly completed from the observed hemisphere so the globe remains natural-looking in motion; the body summary identifies those regions as reconstructed rather than directly observed. Final seam, pole and landmark review remains device-dependent.
Provenance