Pandia (moon)

Pandia, also known as Jupiter LXV, is a small outer moon of Jupiter. It was discovered by Scott S. Sheppard using the 4.0-meter Víctor M. Blanco Telescope at Cerro Tololo Observatory in Chile, with the discovery announced on 17 July 2018. The moon was initially given the provisional designation S/2017 J 4 by the Minor Planet Center after enough observations had been gathered to confirm its orbit. Precovery images of Pandia have been found dating back to 2003. This moon belongs to the Himalia group, a cluster of prograde irregular satellites that travel in similar orbits to Himalia, with semi-major axes between 11 and 12 million kilometers and inclinations ranging from 26 to 31 degrees. With an estimated diameter of about 3 kilometers and an absolute magnitude of 16.2, Pandia is one of the smallest known members of this group. The moon was named in 2019 after Pandia, the Greek goddess of the full moon and daughter of Zeus and Selene. The name was one of the most popular suggestions in a Twitter naming contest held by the Carnegie Institute, with the winning submission coming from the astronomy club of Lanivet School in Cornwall, United Kingdom, submitted on their behalf by user "@emmabray182". The school chose the name because its mascot is a panda, and the local village once supplied bamboo for a panda at London Zoo. As a member of the prograde Himalia group, its name ends in the letter "a". Pandia orbits Jupiter at an average semi-major axis of about 11,481,000 kilometers, with an inclination of roughly 29.0 degrees relative to the ecliptic. Like all of Jupiter's irregular moons, it orbits far enough from the planet that its path is strongly affected by gravitational pulls from the Sun and other planets, making its orbit highly variable over time.