Farbauti or Saturn XL is a

natural satellite A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are often colloquially referred to as ''moons'' ...

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 ...

. Its discovery was announced 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 ...

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 ...

Jan Kleyna Jan T. Kleyna is a postdoctoral astronomy researcher at the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy. His area of interest is galaxy dynamics, and he has worked to develop codes for the real-time detection of moving objects such as Jovian ...

, and

Brian G. Marsden Brian Geoffrey Marsden (5 August 1937 – 18 November 2010) was a British astronomer and the longtime director of the Minor Planet Center (MPC) at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian (director emeritus from 2006 to 2010). ...

on May 4, 2005, from observations taken between December 12, 2004, and March 9, 2005. Farbauti is about 5 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 20,291 Mm in 1079.099 days, at an

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

of 158° to the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of the Earth around the Sun. From the perspective of an observer on Earth, the Sun's movement around the celestial sphere over the course of a year traces out a path along the ecliptic again ...

(131° to Saturn's equator), in a retrograde direction and with an

eccentricity Eccentricity or eccentric may refer to: * Eccentricity (behavior), odd behavior on the part of a person, as opposed to being "normal" Mathematics, science and technology Mathematics * Off-center, in geometry * Eccentricity (graph theory) of a v ...

of 0.209. It was named in April 2007 after

Fárbauti Fárbauti (Old Norse: ) is a jötunn in Norse mythology. In all sources, he is portrayed as the father of Loki. Fárbauti is attested in the ''Prose Edda'', written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in kennings of Viking Age skalds. ...

, a storm giant from

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...

, father of

Loki Loki is a god in Norse mythology. According to some sources, Loki is the son of Fárbauti (a jötunn) and Laufey (mentioned as a goddess), and the brother of Helblindi and Býleistr. Loki is married to Sigyn and they have two sons, Narfi or Na ...

References

Institute for Astronomy Saturn Satellite Data

May 4, 2005 (discovery)

May 3, 2005 (discovery and ephemeris)

April 5, 2007 (naming the moon) {{DEFAULTSORT:Farbauti (Moon) Norse group Moons of Saturn Irregular satellites Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard Astronomical objects discovered in 2005 Moons with a retrograde orbit