Discovery of Autonoe

Autonoe is a small irregular moon of Jupiter, about four kilometres across, and a member of the Pasiphae group of retrograde moons. It orbits at a great distance from the planet in the opposite direction to its rotation. The moons of this group have varied orbits, and astronomers think they are fragments of a body captured by Jupiter and then shattered. Autonoe was discovered in a survey of the outer moons made by astronomers at the University of Hawaii, and its name comes from Greek mythology, in keeping with the convention of ending the names of retrograde moons in e.

Open on the timeline