abstract
| - Twenty-three of Saturn's moons are regular satellites, with prograde orbits that are not greatly inclined with respect to Saturn's equatorial plane. In addition to the seven major satellites, an additional four moons are small trojans that share an orbit with a larger moon, and two more are mutually co-orbital moons. Finally, two moons are known to orbit within gaps in Saturn's rings. The regular satellites are traditionally named after Titans or other figures associated with the mythological Saturn. The remaining thirty-eight, all small, are irregular satellites, whose orbits are much farther from Saturn, have high inclinations, and are mixed between prograde and retrograde. These moons were likely captured minor planets, or debris from the breakup of such bodies after they were captured, creating collisional families. The irregular satellites have been classified by their orbital characteristics into Inuit, Norse, and Gallic groups, and their names are chosen from the corresponding mythologies. The rings of Saturn are made up of icy objects ranging in size from microscopic to hundreds of metres, each of which is on its own orbit about the planet. Thus a precise number of Saturnian moons cannot be given, as there is no objective boundary between the countless small anonymous objects that form Saturn's ring system and the larger objects that have been named as moons. At least 150 "moonlets" embedded in the rings have been detected by the disturbance they create in the surrounding ring material, though this is thought to be only a small sample of the total population of such objects. A confirmed moon is given a permanent designation by the IAU consisting of a name and a Roman numeral. The nine moons that were known before 1900 (of which Phoebe is the only irregular) are numbered in order of their distance from Saturn; the rest are numbered in the order by which they received their permanent designations. Eight small moons of the Norse group have not received a permanent designation.
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