Discovery of Aitne

Aitne is a small irregular moon of Jupiter, only a few kilometres across, belonging to the Carme group of retrograde moons. They circle the planet at a distance of millions of kilometres in the opposite direction to its rotation, and are probably fragments of a single captured body. Aitne was discovered in a survey of the outer moons of Jupiter by astronomers at the University of Hawaii. Its name is taken from Greek mythology and refers to a nymph linked to Mount Etna in Sicily, and the e at the end of its name indicates that the moon has a retrograde orbit.

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