Himalia group

The Himalia group is a group of prograde irregular satellites of Jupiter that follow similar orbits to Himalia and are thought to have a common origin.

Two additional possible satellites discovered by Sheppard in 2017 were identified to be likely part of the Himalia group, but were too faint (mag >24) to be tracked and confirmed as satellites. They were later officially announced in 2023.

The International Astronomical Union (IAU) reserves names for moons of Jupiter ending in -a (Leda, Himalia and so on) for the moons in this group to indicate prograde motions of these bodies relative to Jupiter, their gravitationally central object.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.