On February 16, 1948, the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper discovered Miranda, a moon of Uranus.
This was the fifth moon to be discovered at Uranus, but astronomers have found 27 by now. When Kuiper first spotted Miranda, he was at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, where he used the 82-inch Otto Struve Telescope. Two weeks later, he was able to confirm that the thing he saw was a moon orbiting Uranus. He chose to name the moon Miranda after a character in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," because the other four moons were also named after Shakespeare characters.
This was the fifth moon to be discovered at Uranus, but astronomers have found 27 by now. When Kuiper first spotted Miranda, he was at the McDonald Observatory in Texas, where he used the 82-inch Otto Struve Telescope. Two weeks later, he was able to confirm that the thing he saw was a moon orbiting Uranus. He chose to name the moon Miranda after a character in Shakespeare's "The Tempest," because the other four moons were also named after Shakespeare characters.
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TechTranscript
00:00On this day in space.
00:04On February 16th, 1948, the Dutch-American astronomer Gerard Kuiper
00:08discovered Miranda, a moon of Uranus. This was the fifth
00:12moon to be discovered at Uranus, but astronomers have found 27 by now.
00:16When Kuiper first discovered Miranda, he was at the McDonald Observatory in Texas,
00:20where he used the 82-inch autostrove telescope. Two weeks later, he was able to
00:24confirm that the thing he saw was a moon orbiting Uranus. He chose to name
00:28the moon Miranda after a character in Shakespeare's The Tempest, because the other four
00:32moons were also named after Shakespeare characters. And that's what happened
00:36on this day in space.
00:40NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology