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Oberon (moon)

Adapted from Wikipedia · Explorer experience

A true-color image of Oberon, one of the moons of Uranus, captured by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1986.

Oberon: A Magical Moon

Oberon is a big, dark moon that orbits the planet Uranus. It is the farthest and second-largest moon around Uranus. Oberon is part of a family of moons that all have names from stories written by William Shakespeare. Oberon’s name comes from a fairy king in the play A Midsummer Night's Dream.

William Herschel, a famous astronomer, discovered Oberon in 1787. He was looking at the sky with his telescope when he spotted this shiny object moving near Uranus. Later, people learned that Oberon was a moon!

Oberon is made mostly of ice and rock. Its surface looks dark and reddish because of tiny space particles that have hit it over many years. The moon has many big craters, like the one named Hamlet, which is as wide as many football fields put together.

We only got a close look at Oberon once, in 1986, when the spacecraft Voyager 2 flew by Uranus. The pictures it sent back helped scientists learn about Oberon’s surface. Even today, there is still much we do not know about this faraway, magical moon!

Images

A colorful montage of planets in our solar system, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, taken by spacecraft from NASA.
A size comparison of the Uranian moon Oberon, our Moon, and planet Earth to show how they stack up against each other.
A stunning image of the planet Jupiter and its four largest moons — Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto — captured by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.
A colorful image of Pluto and its moon Charon, showing the unique landscapes of our solar system's dwarf planet and its companion moon.
An image of asteroid 243 Ida and its moon Dactyl taken by the Galileo spacecraft, showing details of the asteroid's surface and composition.
A stunning view of Earth rising over the Moon, captured by astronauts during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.
A NASA image of Oberon, one of Uranus's moons, showing named surface features as mapped by scientists.

Related articles

Uranus
William Shakespeare
A Midsummer Night's Dream
William Herschel
Hamlet (crater)
Voyager 2

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

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