Bestla
Moon· orbits Saturn
Bestla is a moon orbiting Saturn.
Open in 3D viewSee Bestla in the live, interactive 3D map
Key facts
Radius
3.5 km
Orbit around Saturn
1,115 Earth days
3.05 Earth years
Science
Physical
- Radius (estimated)
- 3.5 km
- Sized from its brightness assuming a dark (~0.04) surface — never resolved, so the true diameter (~7 km) could be off by a factor of two.
Orbit around Saturn
- Distance from Saturn
- 0.139 AU
- From JPL orbital elements
- Orbital period
- 3.05 years
- From JPL orbital elements
- Eccentricity
- 0.5606
- From JPL orbital elements
- Inclination to the J2000 equator
- 161.48 °
- From JPL orbital elements
Radiation & temperature
- Insolation
- 0.0109 S⊕ · 1% of the sunlight Earth receives
- Computed from the distance to the Sun (inverse-square; Earth's sunlight = 1), before any atmosphere.
Discovery & history
- By
- S. Sheppard, D.C. Jewitt, J. Kleyna
Bestla was discovered in 2004 by S. Sheppard and colleagues. Saturn's moons are named after giants and deities of world mythology — its distant irregular moons after Norse, Inuit and Gallic figures. Beyond its discovery and naming, little more about it has been individually recorded.
Images
No resolved image of this moon has been released: telescopes and passing spacecraft have recorded it only as a faint point of light.