Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn's
northern latitudes in this true color view. The long, dark lines on the
atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet's rings.
Saturn's northern hemisphere is presently relatively cloud-free, and rays
of sunlight take a long path through the atmosphere. This results in
sunlight being scattered at shorter (bluer) wavelengths, thus giving the
northernmost latitudes their bluish appearance at visible wavelengths.
At the bottom, craters on icy Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles across)
give the moon a dimpled appearance.
Images taken using infrared (930 nanometers), green (568 nanometers) and
ultraviolet (338 nanometers) spectral filters were combined. The colors
have been adjusted to match closely what the scene would look like in
natural color. See PIA06142 for a similar view in natural color.
The images were obtained using the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera
on Jan. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers
(870,000 miles) from Saturn. Resolution in the image is 8.5 kilometers
(5.3 miles) per pixel on Saturn and 7.5 kilometers (4.7 miles) per pixel
on Mimas. The image has been 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 and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org.
