Overexposed Mimas stands starkly against the disk of Saturn as the dim
shadow of Epimetheus is captured through the C ring in the planet's rings
(right of center at the bottom of the image). In reality, Mimas orbits in
the same plane as the rings; it is Cassini's viewing geometry that tricks
our eyes.
The image was taken in blue light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle
camera on Nov. 26, 2008 at a distance of approximately 915,000 kilometers
(569,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle
of 28 degrees. Image scale is 55 kilometers (34 miles) per pixel.
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 operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
