April 7, 1996
The elements that make you — the calcium in your bones, the oxygen in your lungs — were scattered across space by dying stars long before...
Uranus's Moon Umbriel: A Mysterious Dark World
Birthday · April 7, 1996
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APOD published April 7, 1996. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Why is Umbriel so dark? This dark moon reflects only half the light of other Uranus' moons such as Ariel. And what is that bright ring at the top? Unfortunately, nobody yet knows. These questions presented themselves when Voyager 2 passed this satellite of Uranus in January 1986. Voyager found an old surface with unusually large craters, and determined Umbriel's composition to be about half ice and half rock. Umbriel is the fourth largest and third most distant of Uranus' five large moons. Umbriel was discovered in 1851 by William Lassell. Latest Comet Hyakutake images: APOD Hyakutake Archive, JPL, Fayetteville Observer-Times, NASA's Night of the Comet, ICSTARS, Jerry Lodriguss, ScienceWeb, Crni Vrh Obs., Cent. Mich. U.