On Saturday night, September 9th a group of us were at Fremont Peak State Park in central California. We were volunteers at the observatory that night, presenting a program about the moon, sketching the moon, and observing the moon. Since sketching was the name of the game that night, Akkana and I came prepared to do some sketching. We packed it up before waiting for Jupiter and Saturn to rise high enough to view in the 30 inch reflector, but we did observe Neptune and Uranus, and earlier in the evening Venus. The only planet I sketched was Uranus. Through the 30 incher it was an incredible sight. Pale blue. Round. Later in the evening, we sketched the moons of Uranus, too.
Well, I finally got around to looking up the positions of the moons that night to compare to my drawing. Three of the "moons" I sketched were eliminated outright. They were clearly stars. But three of the moons were right on my sketchpad in the correct position at 11:00 p.m. when I made my sketch as they were on the SkyMap Pro 6 chart. A neat equilateral triangle of moons were to be found right below the planet.
It turns out these three were Miranda, Ariel, and Umbriel. Miranda is 300 miles in diameter and the dimmest of the three at magnitude 16.5. Ariel at mag 14.4, and Umbriel at magnitude 15.0 form an icy pair. Ariel is the brightest of the moons and is 720 miles in diameter, while Umbriel is 740 miles in diameter. The moons of Uranus are named after characters of William Shakespeare and Alexander Pope. I like that.
Below these three were the two brighter moons, Titania and Oberon. In Shakespeare's Midsummer-Night's Dream, Titania was queen of the fairies and Oberon was her husband. I didn't sketch these two, either because I didn't see them, or because I was rushing and was tired. Their magnitudes are 14.1 for Oberon and 13.9 for Titania.
Next time, I'll come prepared with a chart so I can try to spot and name all five of these moons. Now I really want to see and verify Titania!