Oberon

Oberon is a name used for several distinct things, most notably a moon of Uranus and a programming language and system developed in the late 20th century. It is also the title associated with a king of the fairies in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Oberon (moon) is one of Uranus’s larger moons. It was discovered by William Herschel in 1787, along with Uranus’s other major moons, and is named after the king of the fairies in Shakespeare’s play. With a diameter of about 1,520 kilometers, Oberon is the second-largest moon of Uranus after Titania. It orbits Uranus at a substantial distance and completes a sidereal year in roughly several days to a couple of weeks, making its orbit comparatively slow among the planet’s satellites. The surface is heavily cratered and ancient, reflecting a long history with little recent geological activity. The moon’s composition is believed to be largely water ice with rocky material, and its appearance is relatively dark compared with some other icy moons. Oberon was imaged in detail during Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby of Uranus, providing the first close views of its surface.

Oberon (programming language) is a language and development environment created at ETH Zurich in the late 1980s by Niklaus Wirth and his colleagues. It follows a Pascal-inspired lineage and emphasizes simplicity, safety, and modular programming. Oberon introduced a compact, single-pass compiler and a clear module system, and it was accompanied by the Oberon operating system. A later revision, Oberon-2, added object-oriented features and a more extensive type system, extending the language’s capabilities while preserving its minimalism and educational focus.

In literature, Oberon is a fictional ruler in Shakespeare’s play, a usage that has influenced the naming of the moon and the broader cultural associations of the term.