PIA06565: Battered Icy Mimas
 Target Name:  Mimas
 Is a satellite of:  Saturn
 Mission:  Cassini-Huygens
 Spacecraft:  Cassini Orbiter
 Instrument:  ISS - Narrow Angle
 Product Size:  422 x 408 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  CICLOPS/Space Science Institute
 Primary Data Set:  Cassini
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA06565.tif (33.59 kB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA06565.jpg (5.169 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

This Cassini image of the Saturn-facing side of icy Mimas reveals the craters and long, linear chasms that cross the moon's surface.

Many of the large craters on Mimas have whimsical names from the legend of King Arthur, such as Launcelot, Merlin and Gallahad. Mimas is 398 kilometers (247 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 14, 2004, at a distance of 902,000 kilometers (560,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees. The image scale is 5.4 kilometers (3.4 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For images visit the Cassini imaging team home page http://ciclops.org.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Image Addition Date:
2005-01-18