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Caliban is a character from Shakespeare's play The Tempest; a savage and deformed slave of the magician ProsperoĦA and is the son of the witch Sycorax who imprisoned the fairy Ariel for disobedience. In The TempestĦA Prospero frees Ariel from Sycorax's spell and enslaves Caliban.
Caliban was discovered by Brett GladmanĦA Phil NicholsonĦA Joseph BurnsĦA and JJ Kavelaars using the 200 inch Hale telescope; the first images were taken 1997 Sept 6 and 7. Credit for Sycorax goes to NicholsonĦA GladmanĦA BurnsĦA and Kavelaars.
The image above is the discovery image of S/1997 U 1; the one to the right is S/1997 U 2.
Prior to this discoveryĦA Uranus was the only one of the gas giants not known to have "irregular" moonsĦA that isĦA ones whose orbits are not direct and approximately in the plane of the planet's equator.
Like the other irregular moons (eg. Jupiter's outer 8 moonsĦA Phoebe and Nereid)ĦA these are probably captured asteroids. It is highly unlikely that they could have been formed initially in these orbits.
The composition of the two moonsĦA according NicholsonĦA "is probably a plum-pudding mixture of rocks and ice." Both moons are unusually red in color which may suggest a historical link with the Kuiper Belt.
These are the dimmest moons ever to have been imaged with a ground-based telescope.
Imaged by Voyager 2 in 1986; discovered in 1999 by Erich Karkoschka of the Lunar and Planetary Lab of The University of Arizona in Tucson.
It's orbit is nearly identical to that of BelindaĦA about 75ĦA000 km from Uranus.
It is about 40 km in diameter.
First imaged by KavelaarsĦA GladmanĦA Holman et al with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea in July 1999.
Their orbits are uncertain at this point but are about 10 and 25 million km from Uranus.
They are probably about 30 or 40 km in diameter (assuming an albedo of .07).
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