Skoll or Saturn XLVII (provisional designation S/2006 S 8) is a retrograde irregular satellite of

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 and Jan Kleyna on 26 June 2006 from observations taken between 5 January and 30 April 2006. Skoll is about 5 kilometres in diameter (assuming an albedo of 0.06) and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 17.6 Gm (million km) in 869 days, following a highly eccentric and moderately inclined orbit.Scott Sheppard's pages
/ref> A rotation period of was obtained by '' Cassini–Huygens'' in 2016, but this is in strong disagreement with 2013 data for unknown reasons; one possible explanation is variation in the rotation speed and axis due to Milankovitch wobble. It was named in April 2007 after Sköll, a giant wolf 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 ...

, son of Fenrir and twin brother of Hati.

References

External links

MPC: Natural Satellites Ephemeris Service
*Mean orbital parameter
from NASA JPL
!-- Broken 2013-10-28 --> {{DEFAULTSORT:Skoll (Moon) Norse group Moons of Saturn Irregular satellites Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard Astronomical objects discovered in 2006 Moons with a retrograde orbit