Miranda (Uranus V) One of the major satellites of Uranus, discovered by Gerard Kuiper in 1948. Its radius is 240 × 234.2 × 232.9 km; mass 0.659 × 10²⁰ kg; mean density 1200 kg/m³; albedo 0.27; gravity 0.01 (Earth = 1); distance from Uranus 129 850 km. The surface temperature is about 43 K. Miranda is composed of rocky material and water ice in approximately equal proportions. The first pictures of the surface were provided in 1986 by Voyager 2 as it passed close to the satellite to gain a gravity assist to take it to Neptune. The surface of Miranda comprises areas of rolling, cratered terrain, with grooves, valleys, and cliffs, one more than 15 km high. Within this terrain there are three coronae. These are square, with rounded corners, up to about 260 km across, and contain dark and bright patches and sets of parallel ridges and grooves. It is now believed that the crust of Miranda was pulled apart by internal forces as the interior was evolving and the coronae formed above major upwellings of partially melted ice, and tidal distortions by Uranus caused heating.

Miranda ★½ 2001 (R)

A romantic fantasy that takes too many complicated turns for its own good. Naive librarian Frank (Simm) is instantly smitten by the oh-so-experienced Miranda (Ricci), who is working on a real estate scam. She heads to London after one night with Frank for a new target, twisted tycoon Nailor (MacLachlan), with her foolish lover trailing behind. Miranda tries to get Frank to leave and instead he gets overly involved in her business. Ricci gets to play dress-up as Miranda goes through a lot of disguises and she's intriguing—the movie's not. 92m/ C VHS, DVD . GB Christina Ricci, John Simm, Kyle MacLachlan, John Hurt, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Matthew Marsh; D: Marc Munden; W: Rob Young; C: Benjamin Davis; M: Murray Gold.

MIRANDA A functional programming language, similar to ML.