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Miranda Moon, Uranus Planet

Moon of the Day

(pictures from John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and NASA.gov)

Miranda, a moon of Uranus, often compared to Frankenstein‘s monster. I made it Halloween themed, let’s go>:)

Miranda was discovered by Gerard P. Kuiper in 1948. The most prominent aspect of this moon is its deformed appearance. The main theory for why this moon looks the way it does is because of tidal forces from other moons of Uranus.

A tidal force is the pull of one object on another object causing changes in the object’s surface. -I don’t know how to explain it :’(

(Picture from National Geographic)

When scientists were generating what the half of the moon that wasn’t captured in pictures might look like, they had to study all of the ridges of this moon, and what they found was that the surface structures were similar to other moons that have underground oceans. At first the idea that a moon of Uranus could have an underground ocean was crazy, but now, they think that this could be possible because of tidal forces that will heat up the inside of the moon, making it a reasonable temperature for liquid to be sustained. This is all still a theory though, so take it with a grain of salt.

Two days ago, I learned that Miranda could possibly have an underground ocean, so I knew that I wanted to make one of these about it soon. It was pretty cool to learn why it might have the ocean though:)