Carme is a retrograde

irregular satellite In astronomy, an irregular moon, irregular satellite or irregular natural satellite is a natural satellite following a distant, inclined, and often eccentric and retrograde orbit. They have been captured by their parent planet, unlike regular s ...

Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...

. It was discovered by

Seth Barnes Nicholson Seth Barnes Nicholson (November 12, 1891 – July 2, 1963) was an American astronomer. He worked at the Lick observatory in California, and is known for discovering several moons of Jupiter in the 20th century. Nicholson was born in Springfield, ...

Mount Wilson Observatory The Mount Wilson Observatory (MWO) is an astronomical observatory in Los Angeles County, California, United States. The MWO is located on Mount Wilson, a peak in the San Gabriel Mountains near Pasadena, northeast of Los Angeles. The observat ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

in July 1938. It is named after the mythological Carme, mother by

Zeus Zeus or , , ; grc, Δῐός, ''Diós'', label=Genitive case, genitive Aeolic Greek, Boeotian Aeolic and Doric Greek#Laconian, Laconian grc-dor, Δεύς, Deús ; grc, Δέος, ''Déos'', label=Genitive case, genitive el, Δίας, ''D� ...

Britomartis Britomartis (; grc-gre, Βριτόμαρτις) was a Greek goddess of mountains and hunting, who was primarily worshipped on the island of Crete. She was sometimes believed to be an oread, or a mountain nymph, but she was often conflated or sy ...

, a

Cretan Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, an ...

goddess.

History

Carme did not receive its present name until 1975;IAUC 2846: ''Satellites of Jupiter''
1974 October 7 (naming the moon) before then, it was simply known as . It was sometimes called " Pan" between 1955 and 1975 ( Pan is now the name of a satellite of

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

). It gives its name to the

Carme group The Carme group is a group of retrograde irregular satellites of Jupiter that follow similar orbits to Carme and are thought to have a common origin. Their semi-major axes (distances from Jupiter) range between 22.9 and 24.1 Gm, their orbit ...

, made up of irregular retrograde moons orbiting Jupiter at a distance ranging between 23 and 24 Gm and at an inclination of about 165°. Its orbital elements are as of January 2000. They are continuously changing due to solar and planetary perturbations.

References

External links

Carme Profile
b
NASA's Solar System Exploration
(by

Scott S. Sheppard Scott Sander Sheppard (born 1977) is an American astronomer and a discoverer of numerous moons, comets and minor planets in the outer Solar System. He is an astronomer in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Scie ...

) {{Moons of Jupiter Carme group Moons of Jupiter Irregular satellites 19380730 Moons with a retrograde orbit

History

See also

References

External links