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Bianca (moon)

Adapted from Wikipedia · Discoverer experience

A photo of Bianca, one of the moons of the planet Uranus, showing its small, round shape in space.

Bianca is a small moon that orbits the planet Uranus. It was discovered in 1986 when the spacecraft Voyager 2 sent back pictures from its journey through space. At first, scientists gave it a temporary name, S/1986 U 9, before naming it Bianca after a character in Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew. Today, it is also called Uranus VIII.

Bianca is part of a group of moons called the Portia group. This group includes other moons such as Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, and Portia. These moons share similar paths around Uranus and have similar features. Bianca is not very large, measuring about 64 kilometers by 46 kilometers (40 miles by 29 miles).

In the pictures taken by Voyager 2, Bianca looks stretched out, with one side longer than the other. Its surface appears grey, and not much else is known about this interesting little moon. There is also an asteroid named 218 Bianca far away from Uranus.

Images

A colorful image of the planet Uranus taken by NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986.
A beautiful montage showing the planet Jupiter and its four largest moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — photographed by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
A 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 tiny moon Dactyl taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 1993, showing details of the asteroid's surface.

Related articles

Voyager 2
Uranus
Cressida (moon)
Desdemona (moon)
Portia (moon)
Asteroid

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

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