Ariel: Uranus's Tilted Moon

space · moons · Uranus · extreme seasons

Fourth-Largest Moon. Ariel is one of Uranus's five big moons and orbits close enough to see if you had a powerful telescope pointed at the distant planet.

Extreme Seasonal Cycles. Ariel's seasons are super wild because Uranus is tilted so far on its side that Ariel's north and south poles take turns pointing directly at the Sun for decades at a time.

Orbits in the Equatorial Plane. Unlike most moons that orbit around a planet's middle, Ariel orbits Uranus right along the planet's tilted equator, following the same unusual tilt.

Frozen and Cratered. Ariel is a small, icy world covered with craters from asteroid impacts, and scientists think it might have valleys and canyons carved by ancient processes.

Discovered in 1851. English astronomer William Lassell discovered Ariel using a telescope, and it was named after a magical spirit from Shakespeare's plays.