Ariel with known topography scaled one in ten million

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tato_713

@tato

The fourth biggest moon of Uranus, and the second in distance to the planet, of the rounded ones.

213

updated April 4, 2021

Description

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Originally published here: Ariel with known topography scaled one in ten million by tato_713 - Thingiverse

This model was rendered using MATLAB R2016a on topographic map from Schenk (2008), made with the images from the Voyager mission. When the Voyager 2 probe flew by the Uranian System, took very few pictures of Ariel. About a half of its surface is known, so the topography that can be deduced from photometry is reduced to a little patch. The rest was filled by interpolation.

The file's names explained: name_1_x_10_y.stl is 1 : x * 10^y. So _1_6_10_7 is 1:600000000 or one in 60 million.

U1 Ariel

Ariel is the fourth larger of the five biggest Uranian satellites and the second in distance from Uranus, after Miranda. Like the rest of the big moons it orbits at the plane of Uranus, which is nearly perpendicularly inclined from the Solar System plane. when the Voyager 2 made the flyby of Uranus, its north pole (defined by the right hand rule) was pointing to the Sun, so only the north hemisphere was visible. Like most of the big icy moons in the Solar System it is highly deformed because the gravitational influence from its parent body.