Discovery of Chaldene

Chaldene is a small irregular moon of Jupiter, a few kilometres across, belonging to the Carme group of retrograde moons. They follow similar inclined orbits at great distances from the planet, in the opposite direction to its rotation, and are generally thought to be fragments of a larger body captured by Jupiter that later broke up. Chaldene was discovered in a survey of the outer moons of Jupiter by astronomers at the University of Hawaii, in a batch of new moons announced in 2000. Its name comes from Greek mythology and, as for other retrograde moons, ends with the letter e.

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