Mimas is caught in the spotlight beneath Saturn's rings in this amazing
view from Cassini. Notable is the brightened outermost edge of the A ring
beyond the narrow Keeler gap and the periodic brightening of the thin,
knotted F ring. Mimas is 398 kilometers (247 miles) across.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow
angle camera on Dec. 18, 2004, at a distance of 2 million kilometers (1.3
million miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle
of 105 degrees. The image scale is about 12 kilometers (7.5 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.