Uranus and its five major satellites appear in this montage of images taken by Voyager 2
during its January 1986 flyby of the planet. Uranus appears in the center as a uniformly
blue globe, much as it would appear to the eye of a passenger aboard the spacecraft;
only with computer image processing do subtle bands appear in Uranus' upper atmosphere.
The satellites, from largest to smallest as they appear here (and not their real relative
sizes), are Ariel, Miranda, Titania, Oberon, and Umbriel. During the encounter nearly two
billion miles from Earth, Voyager 2 also discovered ten smaller satellites and sent data
to Earth on Uranus' ring system and its planetary magnetic field.
