Titania is Uranus’s largest moon: an icy world about 1,578 kilometers (980 miles) across, marked by enormous fault valleys. The best close-up views come from NASA’s Voyager 2 flyby in 1986, and they reveal a surface whose geology is intriguing—but do not establish that Titania is active today.
10 interesting facts about Titania
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It is Uranus’s largest moon
NASA describes Titania as “Uranus’ largest moon.” It is the largest of the planet’s five major moons in NASA’s comparison, not the largest moon in the Solar System. NASA’s Titania overview
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William Herschel discovered it in 1787
Astronomer William Herschel discovered Titania on January 11, 1787.
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Its name comes from Shakespeare
Titania takes its name from the queen of the fairies in William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
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It is about 1,578 kilometers across
NASA’s Uranus-moon comparison table lists Titania’s diameter as 1,577.8 km (980.4 miles). NASA’s overview rounds that to about 1,600 km (1,000 miles), a useful approximation rather than a conflicting measurement. NASA’s Uranus moon facts
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It edges out Oberon in size
NASA’s table gives Oberon a diameter of 1,522.8 km (946.2 miles), making it the second-largest of Uranus’s five major moons. The other three are considerably smaller:
Moon Diameter Titania 1,577.8 km (980.4 miles) Oberon 1,522.8 km (946.2 miles) Umbriel 1,169.4 km (726.6 miles) Ariel 1,157.8 km (719.4 miles) Miranda 471.6 km (293.0 miles) NASA credits these comparison-table diameters to JPL Solar System Dynamics.
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Voyager 2 photographed it during its 1986 Uranus encounter
NASA’s high-resolution color composite of Titania uses images taken on January 24, 1986, as Voyager 2 approached Uranus. Those images remain the basis for much of what is known about the moon’s visible surface.
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Its surface is crossed by enormous fault valleys
Voyager 2 images show long troughs and valleys that break across Titania’s cratered terrain. Some of the visible valleys are nearly 1,000 miles (1,609 km) long—on a moon roughly 1,000 miles wide.
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The valleys suggest the crust was stretched
NASA interprets troughs running in two directions as evidence that Titania’s crust underwent some tectonic extension. That is an interpretation of surface features visible in the images, not proof that the moon is tectonically active now.
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Bright valley-wall deposits may be frost
Some sun-facing valley walls have highly reflective deposits. NASA says they may represent frost; their composition is not confirmed by the images.
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Our detailed view is still a flyby snapshot
Voyager 2’s 1986 images provide the close-up observations behind these surface interpretations. They show a complex, fractured landscape, but do not by themselves establish present-day geological activity.
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