Looking up at Psamathe Trivia Quiz

Answer: Troilus and Cressida

Cressida was discovered in 1986, in images taken by Voyager 2. It has a diameter of 82 km and belongs to the Portia Group of Uranus satellites which include Bianca, Desdemona, Juliet, Portia, Rosalind, Cupid, Belinda and Perdita, all names from William Shakespeare's plays.

The story of Cressida is a very sad one. She was a Trojan woman, a daughter of the priest Calchas, who was in love with king Priam's youngest son, Troilus. When Cressida was forcibly sent to the Greeks, she was pursued by Diomedes and betrayed Troilus's love.

Answer: Neptune

Galatea is an irregularly shaped inner moon of Neptune. It orbits the planet every 10 hours and 18 minutes in a spiral motion. This means that it will eventually impact Neptune and break up in its atmosphere or become a planetary ring.

All the moons of Neptune are named after minor Greek and Roman sea deities.

Answer: True

Himalia was most probably formed by a large piece of an asteroid which had pieces broken off during a collision. Those pieces were captured by Jupiter's gravity and became moons which formed the Himalia Group. Himalia is an irregular satellite because it is very distant - at 11.5 million km from Jupiter, and its orbit is eccentric.

The International Astronomical Union uses names ending in -a for the Jovian moons with a prograde orbit.

In Greek mythology, Himalia was a nymph from Rhodes who gave birth to three sons by Zeus - Sparteus, Cromios and Cytus.

As expected, all the moons of Jupiter with female names have the names of women associated with the god in one way or another.

Answer: Norse

Skathi, or Skadi, was the giantess wife of the Norse god Niord who was associated with the sea and seafaring.

The moon was discovered in 2000 by Canadian astronomers. It is very small, only 8 km in diameter, and it is thought to have been born by a piece of the moon Phoebe which separated during an impact. Skathi belongs to the Norse Group of Saturn's satellites which is a large group of retrograde satellites (their orbits are in the opposite direction of Saturn's orbit).

Answer: Jupiter

Lysithea is one of the sixty seven moons of Jupiter and it, too, belongs to the Himalia Group, a group of four moons that constantly change their orbits because of solar and planetary magnetic disturbances. The four moons are Lysithea, Leda, Himalia, Elara and there was a fifth moon (S/2000 J11) which was a candidate for the group but it has disappeared - it most probably crashed on Himalia.

There are three mythological Lysitheas. One is the daughter of Oceanus, another one, who is also known as Semele, was the daughter of Cadmus and the mother of Dionysus and the last one was the daughter of Helenus. All three gave birth to children fathered by Zeus.

Answer: Saturn

Methone, Anthe and Pallene are the Alkyonides, a group of Saturn's satellites which was discovered in 2004 during the Cassini-Huygens mission. All three have dust rings but Pallene's is the most complete one, it is called the Pallene Ring and mainly consists of material which escaped from Pallene.

The name comes from one of the seven Alkyonides, daughters of the Titan Alkyoneus. Heracles killed their father and the daughters threw themselves in the sea where Poseidon's wife Amphitrite turned them into halcyons (kingfishers).

Answer: Perdita

In 1999, University of Arizona astronomer Erich Karkoschka was studying archived photographs taken by Voyager 2 in 1986, when he discovered a new moon of Saturn. In later observations, the moon seemed to have disappeared and it wasn't until 2003 that the Hubble telescope detected an object in Perdita's original location.

The name came from the lost daughter of the king and queen of Sicily, Perdita, who lived in Bohemia, unaware of her royal blood.

Answer: 40 kilometers

Psamathe, Laomedeia, Neso, Halimede and Sao were the last five outer moons of Neptune to be discovered, in 2002 and 2003. Psamathe and Neso are more distant from their planet than any other moon in our solar system. Psamathe is found at 46,700,000 km (29,018,034 miles) from Neptune.

Psamathe was a Nereid, a sea nymph, and one of the fifty daughters of Nereus and Doris. She was the goddess of sand beaches.

Answer: False

Telesto's photograph depicts it like a very smooth, rounded piece of ice. Telesto is a Trojan moon because it orbits both Saturn and another, larger, moon of Saturn, Tethys. Telesto and Calypso are Trojan moons of Tethys and Helene and Polydeuces are Trojan moons of the satellite Dione. Saturn is the only planet with Trojan moons.

Telesto was a sea goddess, one of the three thousand daughters of Titans Oceanus and Tethys, called Oceanides. They personified spirits and blessings, like clouds, springs, fame, wealth, good fortune. Telesto was the goddess of success.

Answer: The Moon (Earth)

The Moon is the closest celestial body to Earth, the brightest in the night sky and the only one man has set foot on, other than Earth, by 2014. Its orbit is totally synchronized with Earth's, so we always see the same face. It orbits Earth and rotates on its axis in 27.3 Earth days and has a heavily scarred surface because of impacts with asteroids. Since the atmosphere of the Moon is so thin, and there are no weather conditions, the craters have remained unchanged over time.

The Moon and the Sun have been the most influential celestial bodies in every human mythology. They are usually either brother and sister or husband and wife. The Sun is usually associated with light, life and the divine and the Moon with magic and the occult. There are countless lunar deities - to name just a few, there's the Greco-Roman Hecate, the Japanese Tsukuyomi, the Yoruba Yemaya and the Polynesian Hina.