{"id":301030,"date":"2026-02-16T15:06:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/301030\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T15:06:06","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T15:06:06","slug":"feb-16-1948-kuiper-spots-miranda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/301030\/","title":{"rendered":"Feb 16, 1948: Kuiper spots Miranda"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\tBack to Article List\t\t<\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\tToday in the history of astronomy, the fifth moon of Uranus is discovered.\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"620\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/PIA00141.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\tVoyager 2 revealed the weirdness of Miranda: It features strangely varied landforms that appear to be haphazardly pieced together. Credit: JPL\/NASA\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p>On Feb. 16, 1948, Dutch-American astronomer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindahall.org\/about\/news\/scientist-of-the-day\/gerard-kuiper\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gerard Kuiper<\/a> was using the telescope at the McDonald Observatory in Texas to photograph the four moons of Uranus: Oberon, Titania, Umbriel, and Ariel. An unknown bright spot stood out when Kuiper developed the images; further observations over the following days demonstrated that the spot was not a star, as it was in fact orbiting Uranus.<\/p>\n<p>Kuiper named the moon \u2013 Uranus\u2019 fifth known satellite \u2013 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/image-article\/visiting-miranda\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Miranda<\/a>, continuing the tradition of using Shakespearean monikers. The first four moons had been discovered in 1787 (Titania and Oberon) and 1851 (Ariel and Umbriel), but Miranda\u2019s comparatively diminutive size and closeness to its planet delayed its discovery. No other moons of Uranus would be spotted until Voyager 2\u2019s visit in 1986.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back to Article List Today in the history of astronomy, the fifth moon of Uranus is discovered. Voyager&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[61,60,43,82,3629],"class_list":["post-301030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-science","tag-uranus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}