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A small and distant moon of Saturn, just six kilometres in diameter. Skoll is an irregular moon with a retrograde orbit, and probably represents a small asteroid captured by Saturn's gravity. Its orbit averages some 17,677,000 km from Saturn, but this orbit is highly eccentric and strongly inclined, so that the moon can travel as far as 26 million kilometres from its primary planet. Skoll completes an orbit of Saturn once every 869 days (that is, every two years, 138 days).
Skoll is one of a group of about fifty moons with related orbits known collectively as the Norse group (and this group is divided into several subgroups, of which Skoll belongs to the Skathi subgroup). The moon takes its name from a wolf in Norse mythology, related to (and possibly synonymous with) the wolves Fenrir and Hati. Both Fenrir and Hati also give their names to moons within Saturn's Norse group of satellites, each following a more distant orbit than Skoll.
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