Norse group
large group of retrograde irregular satellites of Saturn
The Norse group (or family or cluster; also simply referred to as the retrograde moons) comprises the retrograde irregular satellites of Saturn. They are unlikely to have a common origin as a single collisional family and their orbital parameters are very widely dispersed; more probably they are composed of a number of dynamical clusters with more homogeneous orbital and physical parameters. As of April 2026, there are 210 known members, making it by far the largest group of Saturn's confirmed moons. The Norse group is dominated by moons that are smaller in size, which could be indicative of a recent catastrophic collision event within the population.
Naming
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) reserves names taken from Norse mythology (mostly giants) for the retrograde satellites of Saturn, hence the name Norse group. The term Norse group is only sometimes used as authors do not consider them to be dynamically related like a collisional family, and they may refer to them simply as the retrograde satellites. The exception to the moon naming scheme is Phoebe, whose name is taken from Greek mythology, which was discovered and named long before the others. Only 31 of the moons have names at present.
The discovery of 17 new satellites in this group was announced in October 2019. A team led by Scott S. Sheppard using the Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea discovered 20 new moons, each about 5 kilometres (3 miles) in diameter.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1470691. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2026 and 2019.
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This entry incorporates text from “Norse group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.