Ophelia (satellite)

Ofelia is a natural satellite of Uranus. Ophelia is named after Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius in William Shakespeare's play Hamlet.

It was discovered by Richard J. Terrile from images taken by the Voyager 2 space probe on January 21, 1986, and received the temporary designation S/1986 U 8. designates Uranus VII. The satellite was not detected again until the Hubble Space Telescope observed it again in 2003.

Apart from its orbit, its radius of 21 km and its geometric albedo of 0.08, practically nothing is known about Ofelia. In images from the Voyager 2 probe, Ophelia appears as an elongated object, whose main axis points towards Uranus. The axis ratio of the elongated Ophelia spheroid is 0.7 ± 0.3.

Ophelia acts as the outer shepherd satellite of Uranus's ε ring. Ophelia's orbit is within the radius of Uranus' synchronous orbit and is therefore slowly decaying due to tidal deceleration.