Venus was once thought to have a moon, named Neith after the chief goddess of Sais, Egypt, and first observed in the year by Giovanni Domenico Cassini. German astronomers called the moon Kleinchen (literally "tiny"), and patchy sightings by astronomers continued until 1892. These sightings have since been discredited, and are thought to have been mostly faint stars that happened to be in the right place at the right time or maybe even asteroids passing by the planet. Venus is now known to be moonless.