Amoonlet, minor moon, minor natural satellite, or minor satellite is a particularly small natural satellite orbiting a planet, dwarf planet, or other minor planet.
Up until 1995, moonlets were only hypothetical components of Saturn's F-ring structure, but in that year, the Earth passed through Saturn's ring plane. The Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory both captured objects orbiting close or near the F-ring. In 2004, Cassini caught an object 4–5 kilometers in diameter on the outer ring of the F-ring and then 5 hours later on the inner F-ring, showing that the object had orbited.[1]
Several different types of small moons have been called moonlets:
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Listed in approximately increasing distance from Saturn | |||||||
| Ring moonlets |
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| Ring shepherds |
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| Other inner moons |
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| Alkyonides |
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| Large moons (with trojans) |
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| Inuit group (12) |
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| Gallic group (7) |
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| Norse group (100) |
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| Outlier prograde irregular moons |
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