Safekipedia

Cressida (moon)

Adapted from Wikipedia · Adventurer experience

A view of Uranus's moon Cressida captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, showing the moon's surface from space.

Cressida is a small moon that orbits the planet Uranus. It was discovered in 1986 using pictures from the spacecraft Voyager 2. At first, it was called S/1986 U 3, but it was later named after a character from a story by William Shakespeare.

Cressida is part of a group of moons called the Portia group. This group includes moons like Bianca, Desdemona, Juliet, and Portia. They all travel around Uranus in similar paths and have similar features. Cressida is not very large—it is about 92 kilometers long and 74 kilometers wide. Not much is known about its surface, but it looks gray and stretched out.

Cressida's path around Uranus is very close to one of Uranus's rings. This helps scientists find out how much Cressida weighs. In 2024, they measured its mass to be about 1.8 times 10 to the 17 kilograms. Scientists think Cressida might crash into another moon called Desdemona in the next 100 million years.

Images

A colorful image of the planet Uranus captured by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986, showing the planet's unique blue-green appearance.
Colorful view of Pluto and its moon Charon, showing detailed surface features as captured by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft.
An image of asteroid 243 Ida and its moon Dactyl taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993, showing details of their surface and composition.

Related articles

Uranus
Voyager 2
William Shakespeare

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Cressida (moon), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Images from Wikimedia Commons. Tap any image to view credits and license.