Perdita, a moon of Uranus
47,485 miles
16 miles
Perdita is a a member of a group of Uranus' moons called the Portia group. The Portia group contains nine moons (Bianca, Cressida, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Belinda and Perdita) which have similar appearances and characteristics. These moons may have unstable orbits which leads to the possibility that, at some point in the distant future, they could collide with each other, break up into pieces, form rings or crash into Uranus.
Perdita is a character in The Winter's Tale, a play written by William Shakespeare in 1610 or 1611. She is the daughter of Leontes and Hermione, the King and Queen of Sicily. Leontes does not trust his wife, and suspects that Perdita is not his daughter, so orders his servant, Antigonus, to abandon the newborn Perdita somewhere remote. Antigonus leaves her in the care of a shepherdess, who raises her as her own. Perdita is a kind and compassionate character who eventually reunites with her family.
Most of the moons of Uranus get their names from characters in the works of William Shakespeare. The name Perdita comes from the Latin word perditus which means "lost" or "abandoned" which is fitting for a moon which was first photographed in 1986 but wasn't seen again until 2003.
