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| Titania
[ti tA'nE uh] is the fourteenth and largest of Uranus's known satellites. It has a diameter of 982 miles (1,578 kilometers), and orbits Uranus at a distance of 270,924 miles (436,270 kilometers). It was discovered by Sir William Herschel in 1787, and named for the Queen of the Fairies and wife of Oberon in Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream. Like the other large moons of Uranus, Titania is a mixture of about 40-50% water ice, with the rest being rock. Its surface is a mixture of cratered terrain and systems of interconnected valleys hundreds of miles long. Some of the craters appear to be half-submerged, but further study is needed to be certain. It is possible that Titania was once hot enough to be liquid. The surface probably cooled first; when the interior froze it expanded, forcing the surface to crack and resulting in the valleys seen today. |
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