Miranda

The Voyager 2 Mission

Image [A] was taken with high resolution images with a resolution of about 0.6 km per line pair. (Credit: Smith)

During the Voyager 2 flyby, Voyager took images of the innermost moon, Miranda, which turned out to be a strange body covered in geological faults as deep as 20 kilometers. Half of Miranda’s surface is relatively normal for an icy body, containing old and cratered terrain. The rest of the surface is covered in a mixture of young and old surfaces, with scarps and ridges, some overlapping and some parallel, as well as some bright and dark materials mixed together, suggesting exotic composition. Scientists are mostly interested in its strange appearance and composition, since Miranda has seemingly been severely disrupted and recreated several times by large impacting objects. These objects would have had to be large enough to produce a crater equal to or larger than Miranda itself.

This image was combined from one wide-angle and eight narrow angle images. The trapezoidal region (about 200 km) towards the south pole to center of the mosaic, also showing the outer boundaries with its ridges and bands of varying albedo(or brightness).(Credit: NASA/JPL).

Taken 24 January 1986, this image shows two separate types of terrain: high level terrain(right) and a lower striated terrain. Numerous craters on the high terrain indicates that it is older that the lower terrain. Several fault lines mark the separation of the different terrains. The impact crater in the lower part of the image is about 25 km (15mi) across(Credit: NASA/JPL).

This view of miranda shows possible volcanic flows shown by the arrow in the sketch (B). (Credit: Smith)

(A) View of Miranda that shows dark banded scarps, displaced land surface. (B)Shows the inner cores and outer bands. (C) This image shows a deep ditch-like structure surrounded by enormous scarps.(Credit: Smith)

[1] Smith, B.A., Soderblom, L.A., et. al. Voyager 2 in the Uranian System:
Imaging Science Results. Sci. 233, 4759, 43-64