File:Saturn irregular moons polar plot.svg

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English: Polar plot showing the time-averaged (proper) orbital elements of all 268 known irregular moons of Saturn as of April 2026. Each irregular moon is plotted as an open circle, color-coded by orbital group and size representing its physical diameter. The moon's position represents its semi-major axis in units of million (106) km, inclination with respect to the ecliptic (orbital plane of planets) in degrees, and eccentricity represented as a colored radial line.

Retrograde moons are shown on the left and prograde moons are shown on the right. From left to right, the colors represent:

  • Retrogrades (Norse group; from bottom to top):
    • Purple = Phoebe subgroup
    • Indigo = Mundilfari subgroup
    • Dark blue = Kari subgroup
    • Dark cyan = low-inclination subgroup
  • Progrades (from smallest to largest semimajor axis):
    • Dark red = Kiviuq group
    • Orange = Paaliaq
    • Pink = Siarnaq group
    • Dark yellow = Gallic group
    • Green = S/2004 S 24

In addition, the cluster of black circles near the origin (semimajor axis zero) represent the outermost regular moons of Saturn, which include Rhea, Titan, Hyperion, and Iapetus. The inclinations of the regular moons are shown with respect to the ecliptic, so they inherit their planet's axial tilt with respect to the ecliptic. The dark red circular arc at around 30.1 million km represents half of Saturn's Hill radius at perihelion.

This plot was created in Python, using the pandas, matplotlib, and numpy libraries. Orbital elements were obtained from JPL's Planetary Satellite Mean Elements page, while size (and absolute magnitudes) were obtained from the MPC's Natural Satellites Ephemeris Service. Note that the MPC website gives absolute magnitude H, not diameter; H is converted into diameter via the formula here.
Date
Source Own work; source code available at https://github.com/chirochrone/irregular-moons-aei-polar-diagrams/tree/main
Author Nrco0e

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