The Carme group is a group of retrograde

irregular satellite In astronomy, an irregular moon, irregular satellite or irregular natural satellite is a natural satellite following a distant, orbital inclination, inclined, and often orbital eccentricity, eccentric and Retrograde and prograde motion, retrograd ...

s of

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 ...

that follow similar

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as a p ...

s 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

orbital inclination Orbital inclination measures the tilt of an object's orbit around a celestial body. It is expressed as the angle between a reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object. For a satellite orbiting the Earth ...

s between 164.9° and 165.5°, and their orbital eccentricities between 0.23 and 0.27 (with one exception). The core members include (negative period indicates retrograde orbit):

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 ...

David C. Jewitt David Clifford Jewitt (born 1958) is a British-American astronomer who studies the Solar System, especially its minor bodies. He is based at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is a Member of the Institute for Geophysics and Pl ...

Carolyn Porco Carolyn C. Porco (born March 6, 1953) is an American planetary scientist who explores the outer Solar System, beginning with her imaging work on the Voyager missions to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune in the 1980s. She led the imaging scienc ...

''Jupiter's outer satellites and Trojans'', In: ''Jupiter. The planet, satellites and magnetosphere.'' Edited by Fran Bagenal, Timothy E. Dowling, William B. McKinnon. Cambridge planetary science, Vol. 1, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, , 2004, p. 263 – 28
Full text(pdf).
David Nesvorný, Cristian Beaugé, and Luke Dones ''Collisional Origin of Families of Irregular Satellites'', The Astronomical Journal, 127 (2004), pp. 1768–178
Full text.
/ref> The

International Astronomical Union The International Astronomical Union (IAU; french: link=yes, Union astronomique internationale, UAI) is a nongovernmental organisation with the objective of advancing astronomy in all aspects, including promoting astronomical research, outreac ...

(IAU) reserves names ending in -e for all retrograde moons.

Origin

The very low

dispersion Dispersion may refer to: Economics and finance *Dispersion (finance), a measure for the statistical distribution of portfolio returns *Price dispersion, a variation in prices across sellers of the same item *Wage dispersion, the amount of variatio ...

of the

mean There are several kinds of mean in mathematics, especially in statistics. Each mean serves to summarize a given group of data, often to better understand the overall value (magnitude and sign) of a given data set. For a data set, the ''arithme ...

¹ orbital elements among the core members (the group is separated by less than 700,000 km in semi major axis and less than 0.7° in inclination) suggests that the Carme group may once have been a single body that was broken apart by an impact. The dispersion can be explained by a very small velocity impulse (5 < δV < 50 m/s).David Nesvorný, Jose L. A. Alvarellos, Luke Dones, and Harold F. Levison ''Orbital and Collisional Evolution of the Irregular Satellites'', The Astronomical Journal,126 (2003), pages 398–429
(pdf)
/ref> The parent body was probably about the size of Carme, 46 km in diameter; 99% of the group's mass is still located in Carme. Further support to the single body origin comes from the known colours: all² the satellites appear light red, with

colour indices In astronomy, the color index is a simple numerical expression that determines the color of an object, which in the case of a star gives its temperature. The lower the color index, the more blue (or hotter) the object is. Conversely, the large ...

B-V= 0.76 and V-R= 0.47Grav, Tommy; Holman, Matthew J.; Gladman, Brett J.; Aksnes, Kaare ''Photometric survey of the irregular satellites'', Icarus, 166,(2003), pp. 33–45
Preprint
/ref> and

infrared Infrared (IR), sometimes called infrared light, is electromagnetic radiation (EMR) with wavelengths longer than those of visible light. It is therefore invisible to the human eye. IR is generally understood to encompass wavelengths from around ...

spectra, similar to

D-type asteroid D-type asteroids have a very low albedo and a featureless reddish Asteroid spectral types, spectrum. It has been suggested that they have a composition of organic-rich silicates, carbon and anhydrous silicates, possibly with water ice in their inte ...

s. Tommy Grav and Matthew J. Holman ''Near-Infrared Photometry of the Irregular Satellites of Jupiter and Saturn'',The Astrophysical Journal, 605, (2004), pp. L141–L144
Preprint
/ref> These data are consistent with a progenitor from the

Hilda family The Hilda asteroids (adj. ''Hildian'') are a dynamical group of more than 5,000 asteroids located beyond the asteroid belt but within Jupiter's orbit, in a 3:2 orbital resonance with Jupiter. The namesake is the asteroid 153 Hilda. Hildas move i ...

or a Jupiter

Trojan Trojan or Trojans may refer to: * Of or from the ancient city of Troy * Trojan language, the language of the historical Trojans Arts and entertainment Music * ''Les Troyens'' ('The Trojans'), an opera by Berlioz, premiered part 1863, part 1890 ...

. ¹ Osculating orbital parameters of irregular satellites of Jupiter change widely in short intervals due to heavy perturbation by the Sun. For example, changes of as much as 1 Gm in semi-major axis in 2 years, 0.5 in eccentricity in 12 years, and as much as 5° in 24 years have been reported. Mean orbital elements are the averages calculated by the numerical integration of current elements over a long period of time, used to determine the dynamical families.
²With the exception of Kalyke, substantially redder.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Carme Group Moons of Jupiter Irregular satellites Moons with a retrograde orbit