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Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Umbriel (moon)

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Umbriel (moon)

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This is the archived discussion of the TFAR nomination for the article below. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests). Please do not modify this page.

The result was: scheduled for Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 24, 2024 by SchroCat (talk) 14:37, 9 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Grayscale image of Umbriel from Voyager 2, January 1986
Grayscale image of Umbriel from Voyager 2, January 1986

Umbriel is the third-largest moon of Uranus. It was discovered on October 24, 1851, by William Lassell. Named after a character in a 1712 poem by Alexander Pope, Umbriel is composed mainly of ice with a substantial fraction of rock. It may be differentiated into a rocky core and an icy mantle. Its surface, the darkest among Uranian moons, appears to have been shaped mostly by impacts, but the presence of canyons suggests early endogenic processes. This shows Umbriel may have undergone an early endogenically driven resurfacing event that erased its older surface. Covered by numerous impact craters reaching 210 km (130 mi) in diameter, Umbriel is the second-most heavily cratered satellite of Uranus after Oberon. Like all moons of Uranus, Umbriel likely formed from an accretion disk that surrounded the planet just after its formation. The only close study of Umbriel was conducted by the Voyager 2 spacecraft in January 1986, which captured images of about 40% of its surface. (Full article...)