Saturn's moon Mimas has many large craters, but its Herschel crater dwarfs
all the rest. This large crater 130 kilometers wide (80 miles) has a
prominent central peak, seen here almost exactly on the terminator. This
crater is the moon's most prominent feature, and the impact that formed
it probably nearly destroyed Mimas. Mimas is 398 kilometers (247 miles)
across.
This view is predominantly of the leading hemisphere of Mimas. The image
has been rotated so that north on Mimas is up.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
Jan. 16, 2005, at a distance of approximately 213,000 kilometers (132,000
miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 84
degrees. Resolution in the original image was about 1.3 kilometers (0.8
miles) per pixel. A combination of spectral filters sensitive to
ultraviolet and polarized light was used to obtain this view. Contrast
was enhanced and the image was magnified by a factor of two 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.