* Astronomy

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RE: Mimas

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make its closest examination yet of Mimas, an eyeball-shaped moon of Saturn that has also been likened to the Death Star of "Star Wars." The spacecraft will be returning the highest-resolution images yet of this battered satellite.
Mimas bears the mark of a violent, giant impact from the past - the 140-kilometer-wide Herschel Crater - and scientists hope the encounter will help them explain why the moon was not blown to smithereens when the impact happened. They will also be trying to count smaller dings inside the basin of Herschel Crater so they can better estimate its age.
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Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This global map of Saturn's moon Mimas was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage.
The moon's large, distinguishing crater, Herschel, is seen on the map at left.

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Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Presented here is a cartographic map sheet which forms a high-resolution Mimas atlas, a project of the Cassini Imaging Team.
Mimas, as imaged by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, has a very large, distinguishing crater that makes it look like the "Death Star". As shown in this map, that crater is named Herschel.

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Six New Crater on the moon Mimas have had their names approved by the AUI.
The names are Dagonet, Lucas, Marhaus, Melyodas, Nero, and Royns.

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The Cassini spacecraft looks toward the north pole of Mimas.
The Herschel impact crater is seen at lower left.

Credit NASA

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 11, 2008, when the probe was approximately 795,000 kilometres from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 88 degrees.

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This image of Mimas was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on October 26, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometres from Mimas.
Mimas is travelling from left to right, with the crater Herschel on its leading face.
The moon is less than a degree below Saturn's sunlit ringplane. The rings are squashed into a narrow band from this viewing angle, foreshortening all of their radial features.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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The Cassini spacecraft observes three moons near the rings of Saturn.
Largest is Mimas which sits on the side of the rings nearer to Cassini. Epimetheus lies on the distant side of the narrow F ring. Daphnis appears directly below the eastern limb of Mimas
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about a degree above the ringplane.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Oct. 3, 2007. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.6 million kilometres from Mimas.

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This image of Mimas above the clouds of Saturn was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 28, 2007 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centred at 750 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 3.1 million kilometres from Saturn.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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This image of Mimas was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on June 9, 2007, when it was approximately 1.4 million kilometres away.
The crater, Herschel can be seen on the leading side of Mimas. The moon's night side is partly lit by reflected light from Saturn.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

North on Mimas is up and rotated 12 degrees to the right.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft angle of 89 degrees.
Image scale is 8 kilometres per pixel.