Cressida (moon)
moon of Uranus
Cressida is an inner satellite of Uranus. It was discovered from the images taken by Voyager 2 on 9 January 1986, and was given the temporary designation S/1986 U 3. It was named after Cressida, the Trojan daughter of Calchas, a tragic heroine who appears in William Shakespeare's play Troilus and Cressida (as well as in tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and others). It is also designated Uranus IX.
Cressida belongs to the Portia group of satellites, which includes Bianca, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Belinda, and Perdita. These satellites have similar orbits and photometric properties. Other than its orbit, size of 92 km × 74 km (57 mi × 46 mi), and geometric albedo of 0.069, little is known about it.
In Voyager 2 imagery Cressida appears as an elongated object, with its major axis pointing towards Uranus. The ratio of axes of Cressida's prolate spheroid is 0.8 ± 0.3. Its surface is grey in color.
Cressida orbits close to a 3:2 resonance with the η ring, one of the rings of Uranus.
“Cressida (moon)” enters the record as moon of Uranus. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cressida, moon and Uranus can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cressida (moon)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.