PIA06473: Gazing Upon Mimas


Gazing Upon Mimas

Caption:

On its first orbit of the ringed planet, the Cassini spacecraft gazed into the distance to capture this image of the icy moon Mimas (398 kilometers or 247 miles wide). The faint F ring is visible as the outermost strand of the rings in this view.

The image was taken in visible light with the narrow angle camera on August 16, 2004, at a distance of 8.9 million kilometers (5.5 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 53 kilometers (33 miles) per pixel. Contrast was slightly enhanced to aid visibility.

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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, 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 .

Cataloging Keywords:

Name Value Additional Values
Target Mimas F Ring, Saturn, Saturn Rings
System Saturn
Target Type Satellite Planet, Ring
Mission Cassini-Huygens
Instrument Host Cassini Orbiter
Host Type Orbiter
Instrument Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS)
Detector Narrow Angle Camera
Extra Keywords Grayscale, Visual
Acquisition Date
Release Date 2004-09-09
Date in Caption 2004-08-16
Image Credit NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Source photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06473
Identifier PIA06473