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.