Orbit
Titania orbits Uranus at the distance of about 436,000 kilometres (271,000 mi), being the second farthest from the planet among its five major moons. Titania's orbit has a small eccentricity and is inclined very little relative to the equator of Uranus. Its orbital period is around 8.7 days, coincident with its rotational period. In other words, Titania is a synchronous or tidally locked satellite, with one face always pointing toward the planet.
Titania's orbit lies completely inside the Uranian magnetosphere. This is important, because the trailing hemispheres of satellites orbiting inside a magnetosphere are struck by magnetospheric plasma, which co-rotates with the planet. This bombardment may lead to the darkening of the trailing hemispheres, which is actually observed for all Uranian moons except Oberon (see below).
Because Uranus orbits the Sun almost on its side, and its moons orbit in the planet's equatorial plane, they (including Titania) are subject to an extreme seasonal cycle. Both northern and southern poles spend 42 years in a complete darkness, and another 42 years in continuous sunlight, with the sun rising close to the zenith over one of the poles at each solstice. The Voyager 2 flyby coincided with the southern hemisphere's 1986 summer solstice, when nearly the entire northern hemisphere was unilluminated. Once every 42 years, when Uranus has an equinox and its equatorial plane intersects the Earth, mutual occultations of Uranus' moons become possible. In 2007–2008 a number of such events were observed including two occultations of Titania by Umbriel on August 15 and December 8, 2007.
Read more about this topic: Titania (moon)
Famous quotes containing the word orbit:
““To my thinking” boomed the Professor, begging the question as usual, “the greatest triumph of the human mind was the calculation of Neptune from the observed vagaries of the orbit of Uranus.”
“And yours,” said the P.B.”
—Samuel Beckett (1906–1989)
“Words can have no single fixed meaning. Like wayward electrons, they can spin away from their initial orbit and enter a wider magnetic field. No one owns them or has a proprietary right to dictate how they will be used.”
—David Lehman (b. 1948)
“The Fitchburg Railroad touches the pond about a hundred rods south of where I dwell. I usually go to the village along its causeway, and am, as it were, related to society by this link. The men on the freight trains, who go over the whole length of the road, bow to me as to an old acquaintance, they pass me so often, and apparently they take me for an employee; and so I am. I too would fain be a track-repairer somewhere in the orbit of the earth.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)