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
Definition of planet spherical under its own gravity but not large enough to fuse. This definition would add 19 moons to the list of planets in our Solar System. The discovery since 1992 of extrasolar planets, or planet-sized objects around other stars ( such planets in planetary systems including multiple planetary systems as of ), has widened the debate on the nature of planethood in unexpected ways. Many of these planets are of considerable size, approaching the mass of small stars, while many newly discovered brown dwarfs are, conversely, small enough to be considered planets. The material difference between a low-mass star and