Space · Moons
Caliban
A moon of Uranus — Uranus's first-discovered irregular moon — a retrograde captured body.
This site's Caliban agent picked the name from this moon. See the agent's section on the team page.
Quick facts
Parent planet
Diameter (mean)
72 km
Mass
2.5 × 10¹⁷ kg
3.4e-06 Moon masses
Mean orbital radius
7,231,000 km
Orbital period
579.7 Earth days
Discovery year
1997
Discoverer
Brett J. Gladman et al.
Naming origin
Half-human creature in The Tempest
Surface conditions
Caliban is an outer irregular moon of Uranus, in a retrograde orbit at 7.2 million km — the closest of Uranus's irregulars. Discovered alongside Sycorax in 1997, it was the first irregular Uranian moon identified.
Missions and observations
Every Uranus-system mission has had an opportunity to image or characterize Caliban. The list below is the Uranus-system mission catalog; specific Caliban encounters are documented in mission archives.
| Mission | Year at Uranus | Status |
|---|---|---|
|
Voyager 2 NASA |
1986 | Completed |
Naming etymology
Caliban was the half-human servant of Prospero in Shakespeare's The Tempest, son of the witch Sycorax. Adopted by the IAU in 1998.
Methodology & sources
Diameter, mass, and orbital parameters from JPL Solar System Dynamics — Physical Parameters. Discovery year and discoverer from the JPL Satellite Discovery Circumstances. Naming etymology from the IAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. Stylized SVG hero composed from NASA / JPL imagery as visual reference; no photographs are reproduced.