Sinope (moon)

Sinope is a non-spherical moon of Jupiter. It was found by Seth Barnes Nicholson at Lick Observatory in 1914, and is named after Sinope of Greek mythology.

Sinope did not get its present name until 1975; (in which he declines to name the recently discovered satellites (pp. 93–94))IAUC 2846: Satellites of Jupiter 1974 October 7 (naming the moon) before then, it was simply known as . It was sometimes called "Hades" between 1955 and 1975.

Sinope was the farthest known moon of Jupiter until the discovery of Megaclite in 2000.  The farthest moon of Jupiter now known is .

 Orbit 
Sinope orbits Jupiter on a high eccentricity and high inclination retrograde orbit. The orbital elements are as of January 2000. They are changing a lot due to Solar and planetary perturbations. It is often believed to belong to the Pasiphaë group.Sheppard, S. S.; and Jewitt, D. C.; "An Abundant Population of Small Irregular Satellites Around Jupiter", Nature, Vol. 423 (May 2003), pp. 261-263 However, given its mean inclination and different colour, Sinope could be also an independent object, captured independently, unrelated to the collision and break-up at the origin of the group.Grav, T.; Holman, M. J.; Gladman, B. J.; and Aksnes, K.; "Photometric Survey of the Irregular Satellites", Icarus, Vol. 166 (2003), pp. 33-45 The diagram illustrates Sinope's orbital elements in relation to other moons of the group.

 Physical characteristics 
Sinope has an estimated diameter of 38 km (assuming an albedo of 0.04) The moon is red unlike Pasiphae which is grey.

Its infrared spectrum is similar to D-type asteroids also  different from Pasiphae. These dissimilarities of the physical parameters suggest a different origin from the core members of the group.

 References 

 Other websites 
Sinope Profile  by NASA's Solar System Exploration
David Jewitt pages
Scott Sheppard pages

Category:Jupiter's moons