It was discovered by Smith, Reitsema, Larson and Fountain in 1980 from ground-based observations, and was provisionally designated S/1980 S 13.

[7] In 1983 it was officially named after Telesto of Greek mythology.

The Saturnian system has two additional trojan moons.

The Cassini probe performed a distant flyby of Telesto on October 11, 2005.

The resulting images show that its surface is surprisingly smooth, devoid of small impact craters.