Carme group
group of satellites orbiting Jupiter
The Carme group (or family or cluster; also referred to as the 165° inclination cluster) is a group of retrograde irregular satellites of Jupiter that follow similar orbits to Carme and are thought to have a common origin. They are inferred to be collisional fragments leftover from a single break-up shortly after the planet formation period.
Their semi-major axes (distances from Jupiter) range between 22.7 and 23.6 million km, their orbital inclinations between 164.3° and 164.9°, and their orbital eccentricities between 0.24 and 0.28.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) reserves names ending in -e for all retrograde moons of Jupiter, which includes all those in the Carme group.
Origin
The very low dispersion of the mean orbital elements among the core members (the group is separated by less than 900,000 km in semi major axis and only 0.6° in inclination) suggests that the Carme group may once have been a single body that was broken apart by an impact. The dispersion can be explained by a very small velocity impulse (5 < δV < 50 m/s). The parent body was probably about the size of Carme, 46 km in diameter; 99% of the group's mass is still located in Carme.
Further support to the single body origin comes from the known colours: all the satellites appear light red, with colour indices B-V = 0.76 and V-R = 0.47 and infrared spectra, similar to D-type asteroids. These data are consistent with a progenitor from the Hilda family or a Jupiter trojan. However, one moon, Kalyke, is substantially redder, consistent with the colour of a centaur or a Trans-Neptunian object instead.
The public source identifies “Carme group” as group of satellites orbiting Jupiter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Carme, group and satellites.
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This entry incorporates text from “Carme group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.