OTD In Space – February 16: Gerard Kuiper Discovers Uranus' Moon Miranda

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.