Herschel Crater covers nearly a third of the diameter of Saturn’s small moon Mimas, helping it to resemble the Death Star from Star Wars. Some of the most breathtaking images taken by Cassini of Saturn and its rings have included Mimas in the shot.

Crater upon crater upon crater indicate the surface of Mimas is ancient. Like all the moons of Saturn, Mimas is mostly made up of water ice. The sight alone of Mimas is something to behold, but many scientists thought that every moon around Saturn was going to turn out equally as dead. The Cassini-Huygens tour of the Saturnian system has proved them very wrong.

More Information

• Cassini-Huygens Website
  • Saturn’s Moons section
  • Mimas Information

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Pan
• Atlas
• Prometheus
• Pandora
• Janus
• Epimetheus
• Mimas
• Pallene and Methone
• Enceladus
• Telesto
• Tethys
• Calypso
• Helene
• Dione
• Polydeuces
• Rhea
• Titan
• Hyperion
• Iapetus
• Phoebe

The Cassini spacecraft recently returned a raw image of Saturn dwarfing its tiny moon Mimas. On Monday, July 18, 2005 Cassini was approximately 1,642,603 km (1,020,666 miles) away from Mimas and heading out toward its furthest position away from Saturn during this orbit. Orbit 12 will begin on July 24, 2005 with distant flybys of Mimas, Prometheus, and Calypso during the orbit. The next close flyby will occur on August 22, 2005 when Cassini passes less than 3,800 km (2,400 miles) from Titan during orbit 13.

More Information

• Cassini-Huygens Mission
  • Saturn’s Moons section
  • Raw Images

Talented technicians often turn the images returned by space probes into works of art. This has most certainly been the case with many of the images returned by Cassini from the Saturnian system. Technicians combine images from different filters to try matching what the human eye would see.

In the foreground image, Mimas can be seen orbiting a blue Saturn. The color comes from the scattering of blue wavelengths of sunlight traveling through the atmosphere. Also visible are ring shadows. The background image is another view of the northern hemisphere with ring shadows. The northern hemisphere appears to have less cloud formations than the active southern hemisphere, perhaps because it is winter in the north.

The blue background is Saturn (made so by the scattering of blue sunlight), the tiny globe in the middle right is the moon Mimas, and the foreground tan streaks are Saturn’s rings. The rings are casting their shadows onto the planet.

The Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn has returned first images of many of the planet’s moons. This first orbit will be Cassini’s longest, as Saturn and its moons are used to shrink the orbit down to something more science activity-friendly. In 89 days the spacecraft will make a close flyby of Titan.

On its way out, Cassini took the closest images of Titan ever captured. While visual light images depicted the same smog-covered moon, other frequencies of light were used to take images of the surface. Mysteries abound. The predicted lakes or seas of methane were not seen. Instead, the images revealed a diverse surface possibly modified by different geological processes as well as bright methane clouds hovering near the south pole. When Cassini comes around for another pass it will be much closer, allowing much clearer images.

The images of the other moons reveal little more than Voyager images from the 1980s. Future orbits of Cassini will target specific moons, giving each its own moment in the spotlight.