Links
- Wikipedia
- Ariel on Wikipedia
Ariel
Details
Ariel is one of Uranus' major moons and appears to have the youngest surface among them. Voyager 2 revealed fault-bounded valleys and bright terrain that hint at past internal heating and resurfacing on a distant icy moon.
Ariel matters because it makes the Uranian moons feel less like a neglected outer-system footnote. It is not the largest moon of Uranus, and it has been visited only briefly by Voyager 2, but the part we have seen suggests a world whose surface was not simply left untouched after formation.
NASA describes Ariel as having the youngest-looking surface among Uranus' moons, with few large craters and many smaller ones. The moon is cut by grabens, fault-bounded valleys that point to crustal extension, and carbon dioxide has been detected on its surface. Those details make Ariel feel geologically sharper than its modest size and distance might imply.
That is why Ariel belongs on this scale. It shows that even the underexplored Uranian system contains icy moons with individual histories, not just names in a list. Ariel is important because its bright, fractured surface hints at internal heat, resurfacing, and tectonic stress in a region of the Solar System we have barely revisited since Voyager.
507km
Visual creditVoyager 2 1986 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Kevin M. Gill / CC BY 2.0Source: Wikimedia Commons
Key facts
- Scale fact
- 1,160 kmmean diameter
- Composition
- Water ice, silicate rock and surface carbon dioxide
Scale context
Where Ariel sits on the full axis
Shared physical scale
1,124km
Together, these objects make the size change around Ariel easy to compare at a glance.
Sources
References for Ariel
Measurements and descriptive context are compiled by the Scale of Space team from the references below. If you find an error, please let us know.
- Ariel — Wikipedia
- Visual reference: Wikimedia Commons (Voyager 2 1986 / NASA / JPL-Caltech / Kevin M. Gill, CC BY 2.0)
Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.
About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.