Discovery of Siarnaq

Siarnaq is an irregular moon of Saturn and the largest member of the Inuit group, with a diameter of around forty kilometres. It was discovered in 2000 by an international team led by Brett Gladman, who used large ground-based telescopes to search for faint moons around the giant planets. Siarnaq moves around Saturn on a distant, inclined and slightly elongated orbit, in the same direction as the planet rotates, and takes more than two years for each circuit. The Inuit group is believed to be fragments of a single larger body that broke up after being captured by Saturn. As with its relatives, it was named for a figure in Inuit mythology.

Open on the timeline