Gerd (Saturn LVII), provisionally known as S/2004 S 25, is a

natural satellite A natural satellite is, in the most common usage, an astronomical body that orbits a planet, dwarf planet, or small Solar System body (or sometimes another natural satellite). Natural satellites are colloquially referred to as moons, a deriv ...

Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth the average density of Earth, but is over 95 tim ...

. Its discovery was announced by Scott S. Sheppard, David C. Jewitt, and Jan Kleyna on October 7, 2019 from observations taken between December 12, 2004 and March 22, 2007. It was given its permanent designation in August 2021. On 24 August 2022, it was officially named after Gerðr, a

jötunn A (also jotun; plural ; in the normalised scholarly spelling of Old Norse, ; or, in Old English, , plural ) is a type of being in Germanic mythology. In Norse mythology, are often contrasted with gods (the Æsir and Vanir) and with other no ...

from

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

. She is married to Freyr and the personification of fertile soil. Gerd is about 4 kilometres in diameter, and orbits Saturn at an average distance of 21.174 Gm in 1150.69 days, at an inclination of 173° to the ecliptic, in a retrograde direction and with an eccentricity of 0.442.

References

Norse group Irregular satellites Moons of Saturn Discoveries by Scott S. Sheppard Astronomical objects discovered in 2019 Moons with a retrograde orbit {{Saturn-stub