Miranda (moon) Miranda (moon) Miranda, also designated Uranus V, is the smallest and innermost of Uranus's five round satellites. It was discovered by Gerard Kuiper on 16 February 1948 at McDonald Observatory, and named after Miranda from William Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". Like the other large moons of Uranus, Miranda orbits close to its planet's equatorial plane. Because Uranus orbits the Sun on its side, Miranda's orbit is perpendicular to the ecliptic and shares Uranus's extreme seasonal cycle. At just 470 km in diameter, Miranda is one of the smallest closely observed objects in the Solar System that might be in hydrostatic
Retrograde and prograde motion This has been suggested as an explanation for the preponderance of retrograde moons around Jupiter. Because Saturn has a more even mix of retrograde/prograde moons, however, the underlying causes appear to be more complex. With the exception of Hyperion all the known regular planetary natural satellites in the Solar System are tidally locked to their host planet, so they have zero rotation relative to their host planet, but have the same type of rotation relative to the Sun as their host planet, because they have prograde orbits around their host planet. That is to say, they all have prograde rotation