Cordelia (moon)

Cordelia is the innermost known moon of Uranus. It was discovered from images taken by Voyager 2 on January 20, 1986, and was given the temporary name S/1986 U 7. It wasn’t seen again until the Hubble Space Telescope observed it in 1997. Cordelia is named after the youngest daughter of Lear in William Shakespeare’s King Lear and is also called Uranus VI.

Not much is known about Cordelia except for its orbit and size, which is about 50 km by 36 km (31 mi by 22 mi). It also has a geometric albedo of 0.06. In the Voyager 2 images, Cordelia looks stretched out, with its longest part pointing toward Uranus.

Cordelia helps keep Uranus’s ε ring in place, acting like a shepherd satellite. Because its orbit is inside Uranus’s synchronous orbit radius, it is slowly moving closer to the planet due to tidal deceleration. Cordelia is also nearly in a 5:3 orbital resonance with another moon called Rosalind.