Discovery of Telesto

Telesto is a small, irregularly shaped moon of Saturn, only some tens of kilometres across. It shares its orbit with the larger moon Tethys, remaining near a stable point of gravitational balance ahead of Tethys, while another small moon, Calypso, occupies the point behind. Moons that lie in such positions are called Trojan moons. Telesto was identified in 1980 in ground-based observations by a team of American astronomers and was soon observed by the Voyager 1 spacecraft, and later in more detail by the Cassini orbiter, which showed a smooth surface. It is named after a nymph of Greek mythology, one of the Oceanids.

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