Oberon

Updated

Details

Oberon is the outermost and second-largest of Uranus' major moons. Voyager 2 found an old, heavily cratered surface, dark material on crater floors, and a mountain rising about 6 kilometers above the surrounding terrain.

Oberon matters because it sits at the edge of the familiar Uranian moon system. It is the outermost of Uranus' five major moons and the second largest, large enough to anchor the family with Titania but distant enough that Voyager 2 still saw it as a world with many unanswered surface details.

What Voyager 2 did show was an old, heavily cratered moon. NASA describes Oberon as similar to Umbriel in its cratering, with little sign of internal activity compared with Ariel, Titania, and Miranda. Its surface also carries dark material on many crater floors and at least one mountain rising about 6 kilometers above the terrain.

That is why Oberon belongs on this scale. It is not only another icy satellite near Titania's size; it is the outer boundary of the classical Uranian moon set, a cratered archive where impact history, dark deposits, and limited spacecraft coverage make the moon feel both substantial and still underexplored.

666km
Visual creditUSGS / Tammy Becker / JPL-Caltech / Public domainSource: NASA Science

Key facts

Category
Moons
Object class
Large cratered moon
Host
Uranus
Scale fact
1,523 kmdiameter
Composition
Water ice and silicate rock

Scale context

Where Oberon sits on the full axis

By size on the journey, Oberon sits between Iapetus and Rhea. The band below uses nearby Moons objects for context.

Shared physical scale
2,065km
Charon1,214 km
Iapetus1,470 km
Oberon1,523 km
Rhea1,528 km
Titania1,600 km
Triton2,700 km

Together, these objects make the size change around Oberon easy to compare at a glance.

Sources

References for Oberon

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.

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