Mimas is one of Saturns moons. It’s about 130 km in diameter, one of the smallest bodies in the Solar System with sufficient gravity to pull itself into a spherical shape. This picture was taken in 2010 by the Cassini spacecraft.
The Gentle Reader may make his own moon-not-a-space-station or AT&T-naming-rights jokes.
Image Credit: NASA
Saturn’s moon Mimas peeps out from behind the larger moon Dione in this view from the Cassini spacecraft.
Image Credit: NASA
The animation shows the orbits of Saturn’s visible moons Tethys, Janus, Mimas, Enceladus, and Rhea over the observing run in June, 2019 (with elapsed time bar).
Video Credits: NASA / ESA / A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center) / M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) / J. DePasquale (STScI)
Herschel Crater is 130 km wide, covering a large portion of Saturn’s moon Mimas. The moon itself is only 396 km wide.
The dayside terrain seen here is on leading hemisphere of Mimas. North on Mimas is up and rotated 1 degree to the left in this image which was taken in visible light by the Cassini spacecraft in 2010.
Image Credit: NASA
Cassini snapped this picture with its narrow-angle camera. It shows Saturn and its rings seen here nearly edge on. The image also shows the moons Mimas (above the rings), tiny Janus (apparently almost in the rings), and Tethys (below the rings). “Above” and “below” the rings is a matter of perspective. All three moons and the rings orbit Saturn in roughly the same plane.
Image Credit: NASA
The Cassini spacecraft took this picture through a violet light filter in 2005. It shows the moons Tethys and Mimas on either side of the planet’s rings and the shadows of the rings falling on the clouds below.
Image Credit: NASA
It’s a moon—Saturn’s moon Mimas. The Cassini spacecraft was about 85,000 km from Mimas when it snapped the picture last November. The monster crater Herschel lies near the moon’s limb in this view.
Image Credit: NASA
The changing length of Saturn’s shadow marks the passing of the planet’s seasons. As the planet nears its northern-hemisphere solstice in May, 2017, the shadow will get even shorter. At solstice, the shadow’s edge will be about 45,000 km from the planet’s surface, barely making it past the middle of the B ring.
The white speck in the lower left of the picture isn’t a dust mote on your monitor. It’s the moon Mimas, only a few pixels wide in this image.
Image Credit: NASA
The rings of Saturn are very thin, but they are very, very wide; the Cassini Division (seen here between the bright B ring and dimmer A ring) is almost as wide as the planet Mercury. The 4,800-km-wide division in Saturn’s rings is probably caused by the moon Mimas. Particles within the division orbit Saturn almost exactly twice for every time Mimas orbits. That results in a series of gravitational nudges from the moon which sculpt the outer edge of the B ring and keep its particles from drifting into the Cassini Division.
Image Credit: NASA
Because of the illumination angle, Mimas (right) and Dione (left) appear to be staring up at Saturn looming in the background of this image captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
Although certainly large enough to be noticeable, moons like Mimas (396 km across) and Dione (1123 km across) are tiny compared to Saturn (120,700 km across). Even the enormous moon Titan (5,150 kilometers across, larger than the planet Mercury) would be dwarfed by the giant planet in such a picture.
Image Credit: NASA
Saturn has many moons. The three shown here—Titan, Mimas, and Rhea—show marked contrasts in their surface features. Titan, Saturn’s largest moon and the largest moon in this image, appears fuzzy because we only see its clouds. Because Titan’s atmosphere refracts light around the moon, its crescent is wrapped just a little further around the moon than it would on an airless body. Rhea (upper left) appears rough because its icy surface is heavily cratered. A close inspection of Mimas, though difficult to see at this scale, would show surface irregularities because of its violent history.
Image Credit: NASA
One more thing … If it’s clear where you are this evening, go outside and look up in the western sky just after sunset. There’s a conjunction of Venus and Jupiter tonight. They will be separated by less than half the diameter of the Full Moon.
The great eye of Saturn’s moon Mimas is a 130-km-wide impact crater called Herschel. It seems to be looking back at you in this picture taken by the Cassini spacecraft. The small moon Atlas is also visible (sort of) just outside the main rings. You’re probably mistaking it for a bit of dust on you monitor. Mimas is 397 km across; Atlas is 32 km across.
Image Credit: NASA
Cassini has seen back this crescent view of Saturn’s moon Mimas, the long shadows showing off its many craters, indicators of the moon’s violent history. The most famous evidence of a collision on Mimas (just under 400 km across) is the crater Herschel that gives Mimas its Death-Star-like appearance.
Image Credits: NASA
Saturn’s moon Mimas peeps out from behind the larger moon Dione in this view from the Cassini spacecraft.
Image Credit: NASA
Saturn’s moon Mimas peeks out from behind the night side of the larger moon Dione in this Cassini image captured during the spacecraft’s 12 December, 2011, flyby of Dione.
Dione is 698 miles (1,123 km) across, and its day side dominates the view on the right of the image. Mimas is on the left and measures 246 miles (396 km) across.
Lit terrain seen here is on the Saturn-facing side of Mimas and in the area between the trailing hemisphere and anti-Saturn side of Dione. North on both moons is rotated 20 degrees to the right of the top of the picture.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL
A quintet of Saturn’s moons appear in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft.
Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring near the middle of the image. Brightly reflective Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) appears above the center of the image. Part of Saturn’s second largest moon Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is visible at the right edge of the image. The smaller moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) can be seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane. Rhea is closest moon to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings.
The image was taken by Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on 29 July, 2011. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Rhea and 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Enceladus.
Image Credit: NASA/JPL