Paaliaq is a prograde

irregular satellite In astronomy, an irregular moon, irregular satellite or irregular natural satellite is a natural satellite following a distant, inclined, and often eccentric and retrograde orbit. They have been captured by their parent planet, unlike regular s ...

of Saturn. It was discovered by J. J. Kavelaars,

Brett J. Gladman Brett James Gladman (born April 19, 1966) is a Canadian astronomer and a full professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Physics and Astronomy in Vancouver, British Columbia. He holds the Canada Research Chair in planetary as ...

Jean-Marc Petit This is a list of minor-planet discoverers credited by the Minor Planet Center with the discovery of one or several minor planets (such as near-Earth and main-belt asteroids, Jupiter trojans and distant objects). , the discovery of 612,011 nu ...

Hans Scholl Hans Fritz Scholl (; 22 September 1918 – 22 February 1943) was, along with Alexander Schmorell, one of the two founding members of the White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. The principal author of the resistance movement's ...

Matthew J. Holman Matthew J. Holman (born 1967) is a Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Smithsonian astrophysicist and lecturer at Harvard University. Holman studied at MIT, where he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics in 1989 and his PhD in planetar ...

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). ...

, Philip D. Nicholson and Joseph A. Burns in early October 2000, and given the temporary designation S/2000 S 2. It was named in August 2003 after a fictional shaman in the book ''The Curse of the Shaman,'' written by Michael Kusugak, who supplied Kavelaars with the names of giants from

Inuit mythology Inuit religion is the shared spiritual beliefs and practices of the Inuit, an Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous people from Alaska, northern Canada, parts of Siberia and Greenland. Their religion shares many similarities with some Al ...

that were used for other Saturnian moons. Paaliaq is thought to be about 29 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 15.0 million km in 687 days. It is a member of the Inuit group of irregular satellites. It is light red in color, and in the

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 ...

the Paaliapian (Paaliaqan) spectrum is very similar to the Inuit-group satellites

Kiviuq Kiviuq (also spelled "Qiviuq", "Kiviok" and other variants) is a legendary hero of the epic stories of the Inuit of the Arctic regions of northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland. Kiviuq is an eternal Inuit wanderer. Spirits, giants, cannibals, bea ...

and Siarnaq, supporting the thesis of a possible common origin of the Inuit group in the break-up of a larger body. Its

light curve In astronomy, a light curve is a graph of light intensity of a celestial object or region as a function of time, typically with the magnitude of light received on the y axis and with time on the x axis. The light is usually in a particular frequ ...

has an unusual pattern of four minima, suggesting that it has a very peculiar shape. Paaliaq-CFHT

Notes

References

External links

*Ephemeri
IAU-MPC NSES
{{DEFAULTSORT:Paaliaq (Moon) Inuit group Moons of Saturn Irregular satellites Discoveries by Brett J. Gladman Astronomical objects discovered in 2000 Moons with a prograde orbit