Discovery of Umbriel

Umbriel, the third-largest moon of Uranus, was discovered by the English astronomer William Lassell, who found it together with Ariel from his private observatory using a large reflecting telescope, observing from Malta. John Herschel later proposed names for the Uranian moons taken from literature rather than classical myth, and Umbriel's name comes from Alexander Pope's poem The Rape of the Lock. The moon is dark and heavily cratered, with a surface that appears older and less altered than those of its neighbours. A bright ring-shaped feature on the surface, called Wunda, is a notable mark. Most of what is known comes from the flyby of Voyager 2 in 1986.

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