Aitne

Discovery
Aitne was discovered at the Mauna Kea Observatory in Hawaii by Scott S. Sheppard, David C. Jewitt and Jan T. Kleyna on 9th December 2001.

In-Depth
Aitne is part of a group called the Carme group, a family of Jovian satellites that have similar orbits and appearance therefore they must have a common origin. The group probably began as a D-type asteroid (possibly from the Hilda familyb or the Jupiter Trojans) that suffered a collision, which broke of a number of pieces either before or after being captured in Jupiter's gravity. The largest remaining chunk (still retainging 99% of the group's mass) was named "Carme" and the smaller 16 moons became part of this group.

All Carme moons are retrograde, they orbit Jupiter in the opposite direction from the planet's rotation. There orbits are also eccentric (elliptical rather than circular) and highly inclined with Jupiter's plane of orbit. They're all very similar in colour -- light red -- except for Kalyke, which is considerably redder than all the other moons in the group. All of these ideas support the theory that the Carme group started of as an asteroid, rather than forming as Jupiter's original system. No moons in the Carme group are big enough to pull into a spherical shape, so they're probably irregularly shaped.

Aitne has a mean radius of 1.5 kilometres. The satellite takes 730 Earth days to complete one orbit, with a mean distance of 23.2 million kilometres from Jupiter.

Namesake
Originally designated S/2001 J11, Aitne received its name from a Sicilian nymph who was apparently raped by a Roman god called Jupiter, while he was in the form of a vulture.