Kari or Saturn XLV 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'' ...
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 ...
. 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
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities t ...
, 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 26 June 2006 from observations taken between January and April 2006.
Kari is about 7 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 22,305,100 km in 1243.71 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 reference plane and the orbital plane or axis of direction of the orbiting object.
For a satellite orbiting the Eart ...
of 148.4° 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 ...
(151.5° 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-Centre (geometry), center, in geometry
* Eccentricity (g ...
of 0.3405. The rotation period has been determined to be hours.
The light curve is similar to
Hyrrokkin's, having two deep and one shallow minima, and the moon is probably triangular in shape.
It was named in April 2007 after
Kári, son of
Fornjót
Fornjót (Old Norse: ''Fornjótr'') is a jötunn in Norse mythology, and the father of Hlér ('sea'), Logi ('fire') and Kári ('wind'). It is also the name of a legendary king of " Finnland and Kvenland". The principal study of this figure i ...
, the personification of wind in
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 ...
.
References
Institute for Astronomy Saturn Satellite DataJune 30, 2006 (discovery)
June 26, 2006 (discovery and ephemeris)
April 5, 2007 (naming the moon)
Denk, T., Mottola, S. (2013): Irregular Saturnian Moon Lightcurves from Cassini-ISS Observations: Update. Abstract 406.08DPS conference 2013 Denver (Colorado), October 10, 2013 (synodic rotation period)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kari (Moon)
Norse group
Moons of Saturn
Irregular satellites
Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard
Astronomical objects discovered in 2006
Moons with a retrograde orbit