Ijiraq, or Saturn XXII (22), is a small 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 sat ...

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; ...

. It was discovered by the team of

Brett 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 a ...

, John J. Kavelaars, ''et al.'' in 2000, and given the temporary designation .MPEC 2000-Y14: ''S/2000 S 3, S/2000 S 4, S/2000 S 5, S/2000 S 6, S/2000 S 10''
December 19, 2000 (discovery and ephemeris) It was named in 2003 after the ijiraq, a creature in

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

.IAUC 8177: ''Satellites of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus''
August 8, 2003 (naming the moon)

Orbit

Ijiraq orbits Saturn at an average distance of 11.1 million km in 451 days on an orbit very similar to Kiviuq's. Ijiraq is believed to be in Kozai resonance: its orbit is cyclically reducing the inclination while increasing the eccentricity and vice versa. The orbital argument of pericenter oscillates around 90° with an amplitude of 60°. Like Kiviuq and Thrymr, Ijiraq's orbital elements overlap strongly with

Phoebe Phoebe or Phœbe may refer to: __NOTOC__ People and characters * Phoebe (given name), a list of people, mythological, biblical and fictional characters * Phoebe (Greek myth), several characters * Phoebe, an epithet of Artemis/ Diana and Selene/ L ...

's, and it is likely to collide with Phoebe in the future.

Physical characteristics

While Ijiraq is a member of the

Inuit group The Inuit group is a dynamical grouping of the prograde irregular satellites of Saturn which follow similar orbits. Their semi-major axes range between 11 and 18 Gm, their inclinations between 40° and 50°, and their eccentricities between 0 ...

of irregular satellites, recent observations revealed that it is distinctively redder than

Paaliaq Paaliaq is a prograde irregular satellite of Saturn. It was discovered by J. J. Kavelaars, Brett J. Gladman, Jean-Marc Petit, Hans Scholl, Matthew J. Holman, Brian G. Marsden, Philip D. Nicholson and Joseph A. Burns in early October 2000, and giv ...

Siarnaq Siarnaq, also designated Saturn XXIX, is the second-largest irregular moon of Saturn. It was discovered on 23 September 2000 by a team of astronomers led by Brett J. Gladman. It was named after the Inuit goddess of the sea, Siarnaq, who is more ...

and Kiviuq. Its

spectral slope In astrophysics and planetary science, spectral slope, also called spectral gradient, is a measure of dependence of the reflectance on the wavelength. In digital signal processing, it is a measure of how quickly the spectrum of an audio sound tails ...

(a measure of body

reflectance The reflectance of the surface of a material is its effectiveness in Reflection (physics), reflecting radiant energy. It is the fraction of incident electromagnetic power that is reflected at the boundary. Reflectance is a component of the respon ...

in function of the

wavelength In physics, the wavelength is the spatial period of a periodic wave—the distance over which the wave's shape repeats. It is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same phase on the wave, such as two adjacent crests, tr ...

) is twice as steep as that of other Inuit-group satellites (20% per 100 nm), typical for red

trans-Neptunian object A trans-Neptunian object (TNO), also written transneptunian object, is any minor planet in the Solar System that orbits the Sun at a greater average distance than Neptune, which has a semi-major axis of 30.1 astronomical units (au). Typicall ...

s like Sedna but unknown for

s. In addition, the Ijiraupian (Ijiraqan)The

genitive In grammar, the genitive case ( abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can ...

form of ''Ijiraq'' is ''Ijiraup''. Thus the adjectival form could be

absolutive In grammar, the absolutive case (abbreviated ) is the case of nouns in ergative–absolutive languages that would generally be the subjects of intransitive verbs or the objects of transitive verbs in the translational equivalents of nominative� ...

''Ijiraqian'' or genitive ''Ijiraupian'', parallel to nominative ''Venusian'' and genitive ''Venerian'' for Venus. Se
Inuktitut morphology
/ref> spectrum lacks the weak absorption near 0.7 μm, attributed to a possible water hydration, found in the other three.

Name

Ijiraq was named in 2003 after the '' ijiraq'', a creature of

. Kavelaars, an astronomer at

McMaster University McMaster University (McMaster or Mac) is a public research university in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main McMaster campus is on of land near the residential neighbourhoods of Ainslie Wood and Westdale, adjacent to the Royal Botanical ...

, suggested this name to help astronomical nomenclature to get out of its

Greco-Roman The Greco-Roman civilization (; also Greco-Roman culture; spelled Graeco-Roman in the Commonwealth), as understood by modern scholars and writers, includes the geographical regions and countries that culturally—and so historically—were dir ...

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass id ...

rut. He spent several months trying to find names that were both multi-cultural and

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

, consulting

Amerindian The Indigenous peoples of the Americas are the inhabitants of the Americas before the arrival of the European settlers in the 15th century, and the ethnic groups who now identify themselves with those peoples. Many Indigenous peoples of the A ...

scholars without finding a name that seemed appropriate. In March 2001, he was reading an Inuit tale to his children and had a revelation. The ''ijiraq'' plays at

hide-and-seek Hide-and-seek (sometimes known as hide-and-go-seek) is a popular children's game in which at least two players (usually at least three) conceal themselves in a set environment, to be found by one or more seekers. The game is played by one chos ...

, which is what these small moons of Saturn do: they are hard to find, and cold like the Canadian arctic (the team of discoverers includes Canadians,

Norwegians Norwegians ( no, nordmenn) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nation native to Norway, where they form the vast majority of the population. They share a common culture and speak the Norwegian language. Norwegians are descended from the ...

and

Icelanders Icelanders ( is, Íslendingar) are a North Germanic ethnic group and nation who are native to the island country of Iceland and speak Icelandic. Icelanders established the country of Iceland in mid 930 AD when the Althing (Parliament) met fo ...

—nordicity is their common trait). Kavelaars contacted the author of the tale,

Michael Kusugak Michael Arvaarluk Kusugak (Inuktitut: ᐊᕐᕚᕐᓗᒃ ᑯᓱᒐᖅ) is a storyteller and a Canadian Inuk children's writer, who tells stories about Arctic and Inuit culture. He was born April 27, 1948, just north of Chesterfield Inlet, at a po ...

, to get his assent, and the latter also suggested the names for Kiviuq and

90377 Sedna Sedna ( minor-planet designation 90377 Sedna) is a dwarf planet in the outer reaches of the Solar System that is in the innermost part of its orbit; it is 84 astronomical units (AU), or 1.26×1010 km, from the Sun, almost three times farth ...

References

External links

Ephemeris from IAU-MPC NSES

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ijiraq (Moon) Inuit group Moons of Saturn Irregular satellites Discoveries by Brett J. Gladman Astronomical objects discovered in 2000 Moons with a prograde orbit