It was discovered from the images taken by Voyager 2 on January 20, 1986, and was given the temporary designation S/1986 U 7.

[1] It was not detected again until the Hubble Space Telescope observed it in 1997.

[10] Other than its orbit,[4] size of 50 × 36 km,[5] and geometric albedo of 0.06,[7] virtually nothing is known about it.

In the Voyager 2 images, Cordelia appears as an elongated object with its major axis pointing towards Uranus.

[5] Cordelia acts as the inner shepherd satellite for Uranus's ε ring.