Cordelia: A Tiny Moon of Uranus!

Cordelia is a moon, which means it's a space rock that goes around a planet. Cordelia's planet is Uranus, a super-duper big planet that looks blue. Cordelia is very small, much smaller than Earth's moon. It's only about 8 kilometers (5 miles) across, which is about the length of a school bus! Imagine a tiny bus flying around a giant blue ball in space. That's Cordelia and Uranus!

Cordelia is a super-fast traveler! It orbits Uranus really, really quickly. It takes Cordelia only about 5 hours and 30 minutes to go all the way around Uranus one time. That's faster than you can watch a whole movie! Because it's so close to Uranus, it has to move fast to stay in its path. It's like a race car going around a track.

Scientists think Cordelia is made of ice and rock, just like many other moons and asteroids. It's not a big, round ball like Earth's moon. Instead, it's shaped more like a potato or a lumpy rock. It's probably very dark and rocky, with no atmosphere to breathe. It's a very simple place, just a chunk of space stuff going around its giant planet.

Cordelia wasn't always known. It was discovered in 1986 by a team of scientists looking at pictures from a spacecraft called Voyager 2. This spacecraft flew past Uranus and took amazing photos. They spotted Cordelia in those pictures, showing us another one of Uranus's many moons. It's like finding a hidden treasure in a photo album!