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
Planet that objects that fulfill the orbital zone clearance requirement automatically fulfill the roundness requirement. The table below lists Solar System bodies once considered to be planets. Beyond the scientific community, Pluto still holds cultural significance for many in the general public due to its historical classification as a planet from 1930 to 2006. A few astronomers, such as Alan Stern, consider dwarf planets and the larger moons to be planets, based on a purely geophysical definition of "planet". The names for the planets in the Western world are derived from the naming practices of the Romans, which ultimately derive from