Two recently discovered moons in orbit around Uranus have been named after characters in Shakespeare's play The Tempest. `Caliban' and `Sycorax' were named by Cornell University astronomer, Dr Philip Nicholson and colleagues. The International Astronomical Union is expected to approve the names for the new moons, reported on October 31st last by Nicholson and his coresearchers in the US and Canada.
Caliban has a diameter of about 60 kilometres and the larger Sycorax is 120 km across. The composition of the two moons, Dr Nicholson believes "is probably a plum-pudding mixture of rocks and ice".
Unusually the two have a reddish tinge, the researchers report in the science journal . This brings to 17 the number of moons known to orbit Uranus.
