Moons of Uranus from Uranus outward, and this finally stuck. In 1852, Herschel's son John Herschel gave the four then-known moons their names. No other discoveries were made for almost another century. In 1948, Gerard Kuiper at the McDonald Observatory discovered the smallest and the last of the five large, spherical moons, Miranda. Decades later, the flyby of the "Voyager 2" space probe in January 1986 led to the discovery of ten further inner moons. Another satellite, Perdita, was discovered in 1999 after studying old "Voyager" photographs. Uranus was the last giant planet without any known irregular moons, but since 1997 nine distant
Moons of Uranus spheroid are highlighted in light blue and bolded. Irregular moons with retrograde orbits are shown in dark grey. Margaret, the only known irregular moon of Uranus with a prograde orbit, is shown in light grey. "Sources:" NASA/NSSDC, Sheppard, et al. 2005. For the recently discovered outer irregular moons (Francisco through Ferdinand) the most accurate orbital data can be generated with the Natural Satellites Ephemeris Service. The irregulars are significantly perturbed by the Sun. Moons of Uranus Uranus is the seventh planet of the Solar System; it has 27 known moons, all of which are named after characters from the works