Discovery of Methone

Methone is a tiny moon of Saturn, discovered in images taken by the Cassini spacecraft, and it orbits between the larger moons Mimas and Enceladus. It is one of the Alkyonides, a group of small moons named after the daughters of the giant Alkyoneus in Greek mythology. Its orbit is in resonance with that of Mimas, which keeps it in a stable position. Close images from Cassini showed that Methone is a remarkably smooth, egg-shaped body with no obvious craters, suggesting that its surface is covered by a fine layer of material, possibly from the plumes of Enceladus. It is only a few kilometres across.

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