What is "despina"

Despina is a given name for girls, meaning 'lady' in Greek. Most of the time it refers to the Virgin Mary, Our Lady. The masculin of Despina is Despot or the equivalent of ruler or King. Very common among the Greek population. It may refer to:

• Despina Delios
• Despina Pavlou
• Despina Vandi
• Olivera Lazarević (ca. 1373 - died after 1444), Serbian princess and Ottoman queen consort

It may also refer to:

• Despoina, a figure in Greek mythology
• Maria Despina
• Despina (moon), a moon of Neptune
• Despina, a character in Mozart's opera Così fan tutte
• "Despoina", a song by Nikos Karvelas

Despina ( or ; Latin: Despœna,; Greek: Δέσποινα), also known as Neptune V, is the third closest inner satellite of Neptune. It is named after Despoina, a nymph who was a daughter of Poseidon and Demeter.

Despina was discovered in late July 1989 from the images taken by the Voyager 2 probe. It was given the temporary designation S/1989 N 3. The discovery was announced (IAUC 4824) on August 2, 1989, but the text only talks of "10 frames taken over 5 days", giving a discovery date of sometime before July 28. The name was given on 16 September 1991.

Despina is irregularly shaped and shows no sign of any geological modification. It is likely that it is a rubble pile re-accreted from fragments of Neptune's original satellites, which were smashed up by perturbations from Triton soon after that moon's capture into a very eccentric initial orbit.

Despina's orbit lies close to but outside of the orbit of Thalassa and just inside the Le Verrier ring. As it is also below Neptune's synchronous orbit radius, it is slowly spiralling inward due to tidal deceleration and may eventually impact Neptune's atmosphere, or break up into a planetary ring upon passing its Roche limit due to tidal stretching.

Despina rhodosema is a moth in the Oecophoridae family and only species in the Despina genus. It was described by Meyrick in 1931. It is found in Chile.