Tags: Oberon, Uranus
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Oberon is Uranus’ large moon. It orbits the planet at a distance of about 583,000 km, making it Uranus’ most distant known satellite. It takes 13.5 Earth days for the moon to completely orbit the planet. Oberon’s orbit is circular and is parallel to Uranus’ equator. It measures about 1520 km across or about half the diameter of Earth’s moon and is spherical.
Oberon has a surface that is heavy cratered with many large craters indicating the moon’s great age. The moon’s top layer surface is dark but asteroids that hit the moon sometimes punch through to a bright ice layer below. Oberon was discovered in by British astronomer Sir William Herschel in 1787 was was named after a character in William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream.