Saturn LX, provisionally known as S/2004 S 29, is a

natural satellite A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are often colloquially referred to as ''moons'' ...

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second-largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant with an average radius of about nine and a half times that of Earth. It has only one-eighth the average density of Earth; h ...

and a member of the

Gallic group The Gallic group is a dynamical grouping of the prograde irregular satellites of Saturn following similar orbits. Their semi-major axes range between 16 and 19 Gm, their inclinations between 35° and 40°, and their eccentricities around 0.53. ...

. Its discovery was announced by

Scott S. Sheppard Scott Sander Sheppard (born 1977) is an American astronomer and a discoverer of numerous moons, comets and minor planets in the outer Solar System. He is an astronomer in the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at the Carnegie Institution for Scie ...

David C. Jewitt David Clifford Jewitt (born 1958) is a British-American astronomer who studies the Solar System, especially its minor bodies. He is based at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is a Member of the Institute for Geophysics and Pl ...

, and

Jan Kleyna Jan T. Kleyna is a postdoctoral astronomy researcher at the University of Hawai'i Institute for Astronomy. His area of interest is galaxy dynamics, and he has worked to develop codes for the real-time detection of moving objects such as Jovian ...

on October 7, 2019 from observations taken between December 12, 2004 and January 17, 2007. It was given its permanent designation in August 2021. Saturn LX is about 4 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of in , at an average inclination of 38.6° to the ecliptic, with an eccentricity of 0.485. Saturn LX was initially thought to be part of the

Inuit group The Inuit group is a dynamical grouping of the prograde irregular satellites of Saturn which follow similar orbits. Their semi-major axes range between 11 and 18 Gm, their inclinations between 40° and 50°, and their eccentricities between ...

before it was recategorized to the Gallic group in 2022.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saturn 60 Gallic group Irregular satellites Moons of Saturn Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard Astronomical objects discovered in 2019 Moons with a prograde orbit