Discovery of S/2004 S 3

S/2004 S 3 is a provisional designation given to a possible new object seen in images from the Cassini spacecraft shortly after it reached Saturn in 2004. Under the usual naming system, the S refers to Saturn, and the year and number show the order in which candidate moons were logged. The object was found near Saturn's narrow F ring, a region where small moonlets and clumps of ring material interact and change over time. Follow-up observations did not establish it as a permanent moon, so it remained unconfirmed. Its record shows how careful astronomers must be when separating real satellites from temporary structures in the rings.

Open on the timeline