Francisco, a moon of Uranus

Francisco is one of the outer irregular moons of Uranus and follows a prograde orbit, meaning it travels in the same direction that Uranus spins. With a diameter of only about 22 kilometres (14 miles), it is a tiny, distant satellite compared to Uranus’s larger moons.

Francisco was discovered in 2001 by a team of astronomers led by Matthew J. Holman and J. J. Kavelaars, using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea Observatory, Hawaii. Because it is so far from Uranus and so small, Francisco is very faint, making it a challenging target for telescopes.

As an irregular moon, Francisco is believed to be a captured object, possibly an asteroid or Kuiper Belt body that wandered too close to Uranus and became trapped by the planet’s gravity. Its distant orbit is highly eccentric (elongated) compared to the near-circular paths of Uranus’s large regular moons.