December 24, 1995
If the universe seems cold from a distance, birthdays are part of its rebuttal.
Uranus' Moon Miranda
Birthday · December 24, 1995
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published December 24, 1995. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
NASA's robot spacecraft Voyager 2 passed the planet Uranus and its moons in 1986. While the cloud tops of Uranus proved to be rather featureless, the surface of Miranda, the innermost of Uranus' large moons, showed several interesting features. Voyager 2 passed closer to Miranda than to any Solar System body and hence photographed it with the clearest resolution. Miranda's heavily cratered terrain shows grooves like Jupiter's moon Ganymede and several valleys and cliffs. Miranda is made of a roughly equal mix of ice and rock. Miranda was discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1948.