Loge or Saturn XLVI 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 colloquially referred to as moons, a deriv ...

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 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

. Its discovery was announced by Scott S. Sheppard, David C. Jewitt,

Jan Kleyna Jan T. Kleyna is a postdoctoral astronomy researcher at the University of Hawaiʻi The University of Hawaiʻi System is a public college and university system in Hawaii. The system confers associate, bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degre ...

, and Brian G. Marsden on 26 June 2006, from observations taken between January and April 2006. Loge is about 5 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 23,142,000 km in 1314.364 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 166.5° to the

ecliptic The ecliptic or ecliptic plane is the orbital plane of Earth's orbit, Earth around the Sun. It was a central concept in a number of ancient sciences, providing the framework for key measurements in astronomy, astrology and calendar-making. Fr ...

(165.3° 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 0.1390. It has a tentative rotation period of about hours, but this is highly uncertain as the light curve is the shallowest among all the irregular moons studied by ''

Cassini–Huygens ''Cassini–Huygens'' ( ), commonly called ''Cassini'', was a space research, space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, i ...

'' (amplitude about 0.07 magnitudes). It was named in April 2007, after Logi, a fire 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 as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

References

External links

Institute for Astronomy Saturn Satellite Data

June 30, 2006 (discovery)

June 26, 2006 (discovery and ephemeris)

April 5, 2007 (naming the moon) {{DEFAULTSORT:Loge (Moon) Norse group Moons of Saturn Irregular satellites Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard Astronomical objects discovered in 2006 Moons with a retrograde orbit