Discovery of Skoll

Skoll is a small irregular moon of Saturn, a few kilometres across, that orbits the planet at a great distance in a tilted, elongated path. It was found in images taken in 2006 by a team led by Scott Sheppard using telescopes on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, as part of a survey for faint satellites of the giant planets. It belongs to the Norse group of Saturn's moons, which follow orbits opposite to the planet's rotation and are probably fragments of a larger body captured long ago. Following the tradition for these moons, it was named after a figure in Norse mythology, in this case the wolf who pursues the Sun across the sky.

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