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Methone (provisional name S/2004 S 1) is a natural satellite of Saturn. It was discovered by Cassini scientists led by Carolyn C. Porco, et al. in 2004. Methone orbits Saturn at a distance of about 194 Mm (thus its period is 1.007 d) and is about 3 kilometres in diameter.
The names Methone and Pallene have been provisionally approved by the IAU Division III Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. They should be officially approved at the IAU General Assembly in 2006. Methone was one of the Alkyonides, the seven beautiful daughters of the Giant Alkyoneus.
Discovery image of S/2004 S 1 This may be the same satellite which was seen on August 23, 1981 by Voyager 2 in a single photograph and named S/1981 S 14. Its distance to Saturn was then estimated at 200 Mm.
Supposing its density equal to Mimas' (1.17 t/m³), one can estimate the following:
The moons were first seen by Sébastien Charnoz, a planetary dynamicist working with Carolyn Porco and with André Brahic, Cassini imaging team member at the Université de Paris. "Discovering these faint satellites was an exciting experience, especially the feeling of being the first person to see a new body of our solar system", said Charnoz. "I had looked for such objects for weeks while at my office in Paris, but it was only once on holiday, using my laptop, that my code eventually detected them. This tells me I should take more holidays."
In order to search for new moons, Cassini captured about 75 pairs of images (one to either side of Saturn) over a period of many hours on June 1, 2004. Charnoz' software sifted through these images, searching for objects that could be moons.
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