These planets are difficult to image. They are large but a very long way away.
Below is a monochrome picture of Uranus with four of its satellites. Move your mouse over the picture to see which is which; the numbers in brackets are the magnitudes. Both Uranus itself and the small star on the right are grossly over-exposed and so appear much bigger than they really were. The bright halo around Uranus is also an artifact of the over-exposure and the processing. Miranda is also in the picture but it was only 2 arc-seconds away from Ariel and, at magnitude 16.5, I am doubtful if I would have detected it even if it hadn't been so close to the much brighter Ariel. For comparison, Ariel was 10 arc-seconds from Uranus.
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Date and Time: 6th October 2010 22:34 UT Set-up: DMK 21AF04 with Astronomik CLS filter on the LX200 Capture: ICCapture, 85 frames, 4", gain 877 Processing: Registax, 66 frames stacked, gamma 1.7, wavelets 1 = 10, 2 = 5, histogram 20-130. PhotoImpact, contrast 10, Focus Magic 6,100, contrast 40. Distance 2,862,000,000 Km (19.13 AU) Size 3 arc-sec |