It is one of three small moons known as the Alkyonides that lie between the orbits of the larger Mimas and Enceladus.

After the discovery in 2004, it was realized that Pallene had been first photographed on August 23, 1981, by the space probe Voyager 2.

It had appeared in a single photograph and had been provisionally named S/1981 S 14 and estimated to orbit 200,000 km from Saturn.

[4] In 2006, images taken in forward-scattered light by the Cassini spacecraft enabled the Cassini Imaging Team to discover a faint dust ring around Saturn that shares Pallene's orbit, now named the Pallene Ring.

Its source is particles blasted off Pallene's surface by meteoroid impacts, which then form a diffuse ring around its orbital path.