Tarqeq, also known as Saturn LII (provisional designation S/2007 S 1) 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. 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 13 April 2007 from observations taken between 5 January 2006 and 22 March 2007.MPEC 2007-G38: ''S/2007 S 1''
13 April 2007 (discovery, prediscovery and ephemeris)
11 May 2007 (discovery) It is named after Tarqeq, the

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

moon god A lunar deity or moon deity is a deity who represents the Moon, or an aspect of it. These deities can have a variety of functions and traditions depending upon the culture, but they are often related. Lunar deities and Moon worship can be foun ...

,IAUC 8873: ''Satellites of Saturn''
20 September 2007 (naming) and is a member of the Inuit group of irregular satellites. It is about six kilometres in diameter. The ''Cassini'' spacecraft observed Tarqeq over 1.5 days on 15–16 January 2014. The Tarqiupian (Tarqeqian) orbit lies 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 49.90° (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 agains ...

; 49.77° to Saturn's equator), 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 0.1081 and a semi-major axis of 17.9106 Gm. Tarqeq orbits in a prograde direction with a period of 894.86 days. Tarqeq is the slowest-rotating irregular moon measured by '' Cassini–Huygens'', with a period of about and a roughly ellipsoidal shape. This is very close to a 1:5 resonance with Titan's orbital period, suggesting that gravitational interactions possibly lock Tarqeq in a

mean-motion resonance In celestial mechanics, orbital resonance occurs when orbiting bodies exert regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other, usually because their orbital periods are related by a ratio of small integers. Most commonly, this relationsh ...

. It has very similar inclination and semi-major axis as Siarnaq, suggesting that it is a fragment of the latter.

Notes

References

{{Saturn Moons of Saturn Inuit group Irregular satellites Discoveries by Brett J. Gladman Astronomical objects discovered in 2000 Moons with a prograde orbit