Helene at Saturn

The Cassini spacecraft captured this closeup image of Helene on June 18, 2011. Helene is a small satellite of Saturn about 20 miles across. Helene is a coorbital satellite, which means that it shares an orbit with the much larger satellite Dione that is ~30 times larger and ~30,000 times more massive. Helene resides at Dione's L4 Lagrange point, which is a stable niche in Dione's orbit that leads that satellite by 60 degrees. The other stable niche is of course the L5 Lagrange point that trails Dione by 60 degrees. The orbit of a coorbital satellite is analogous to the Trojan asteroids that lead or trail Jupiter by 60 degrees in its orbit about the Sun.

No one knows how a coorbital satellite like Helene came to reside in such a special orbit. But it is conceivable that a coorbital satellite is debris that was excavated when the larger satellite Dione was stuck by a comet long ago. If this scenario is correct, then a lucky fraction of that debris managed to find and settle into one or both Lagrange points where it could have reassembled into a small coorbital satellite like Helene.

To see more images of Helene, as well as the rest of the Saturnian system, visit Cassini's CICLOPS website.