By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor

There are probably more like this

The discovery has been made by the same team that recently announced it had found a clutch of new moons around Jupiter.

They point out that until now Saturn was the only gas giant planet not to have a new satellite discovery announced in the past year.

The latest discovery means there 31 known moons of Saturn. Jupiter has 58.

The new satellite was discovered on 5 February by Scott Sheppard and David Jewitt, from Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, along with Jan Kleyna, of Cambridge University, UK.

Like the new satellites of Jupiter, it was found using the world's biggest telescope/wide-field digital camera combo on the 8.3-metre Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

The observation was later conformed by the University of Hawaii 2.2-metre telescope.

The moon, designated S 2003/S1, is in an orbit opposite to Saturn's spin, and is probably only about eight kilometres (five miles) in diameter.