
P-29519BW Range: 500,000 kilometers (300,000 miles) Several craters are seen on the surface of 1986U1, one of the several small moons of Uranus discovered by Voyager 2. This single image, a clear-filtered, narrow-angle picture with a resolution of about 10 km (6 mi), is the only closeup the spacecraft obtained of any of the new moons. The moon was found December 30, 1985; it was the first and largest of nine satellites discovered by the spacecraft's cameras. This image shows 1986U1 to be a dark, nearly spherical object, with a diameter of about 150 km (90 mi); the dark surface reflects only 7 percent of the incident light. The picture was inserted into the Voyager encounter sequence late in its development.This image has had a complex history, having been recorded on the spacecraft tape recorder and first played back during the late afternoon of its recording. An antenna-pointing problem at one of the Austrailian tracking stations led to the loss of the data, so the image had to be retransmitted.
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NASA ID
ARC-1986-A86-7035
Date Created
January 27, 1986
Center
ARC
Media Type
image
Photographer
JPL
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