PIA09811: Rough, Icy Mimas


Rough, Icy Mimas

Caption:

The Cassini spacecraft views the rugged surface of Mimas—half lit by the Sun, and half lit by reflected light from Saturn. On the sunlit western limb lies the great Herschel impact crater.

The view looks toward a region centered on 50 degrees west longitude on Mimas (397 kilometers, or 247 miles across). North is up and rotated 9 degrees to the right.

The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 2, 2007. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 625,000 kilometers (388,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 96 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.

Background Info:

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/home/index.cfm . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Mimas Saturn
System Saturn
Target Type Satellite Planet
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Crater, Grayscale, Impact, Rotation, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2008-01-09
Date in Caption 2007-12-02
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA09811
Identifier PIA09811