Letters from the strange corners

Every irregular moon of Uranus orbits backwards. Except one. Margaret is 20 kilometers of dark captured ice, and the only irregular moon in the system that travels with the planet, not against it. The stranger part is the name: it carries three women at once.

Officially she is Shakespeare's Margaret, servant of Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. Astronomer Scott Sheppard found her on purpose. He had long wanted to name something for his mother, but Jupiter's conventions left no room for a mom. Uranus borrows its moon names from literature, so in 2002 he searched the web for “Margaret Shakespeare”, got Much Ado, and gave her a framed discovery image labeled “Moon Margaret” for Mother's Day. She cried.

The third Margaret was almost accidental. Kavelaars' team first spotted it in 2001, and his elder daughter, Ruth Ann Margaret, was still sore that no moon carried her name. When Sheppard proposed Margaret, Kavelaars told him it was perfect. Now he could tell her: this one is yours.

One small rock, three Margarets: a servant who barely speaks, an astronomer's mother, and an elder daughter who finally got one. Naming, it turns out, is inheritance. The rock just had room for all of them.