List of natural satellites
Uranus has 27 named moons, five of which are massive enough to have achieved hydrostatic equilibrium. There are another 13 inner moons that orbit within Uranus's ring system, and another nine outer irregular moons. Unlike most planetary moons, which are named from antiquity, all the moons of Uranus are named after characters from the works of Shakespeare and Alexander Pope's work "The Rape of the Lock".
Ariel (moon)
The only close-up images of Ariel were obtained by the "Voyager 2" probe, which photographed the moon during its flyby of Uranus in January 1986. The closest approach of "Voyager 2" to Ariel was —significantly less than the distances to all other Uranian moons except Miranda. The best images of Ariel have a spatial resolution of about 2 km. They cover about 40% of the surface, but only 35% was photographed with the quality required for geological mapping and crater counting. At the time of the flyby the southern hemisphere of Ariel (like those of the other moons) was pointed towards the Sun, so the northern (dark) hemisphere could not be studied. No other spacecraft has ever visited the Uranian system. The possibility of sending the Cassini spacecraft to Uranus was evaluated during its mission extension planning phase. It would have taken about twenty years to get to the Uranian system after departing Saturn, and these plans were scrapped in favour of remaining at Saturn and eventually destroying the spacecraft in Saturn's atmosphere.