Another Death Star?

Although Mimas holds the unofficial designation of "Death Star moon," Tethys is seen here also vaguely resembling the space station from Star Wars. Apparently, Tethys doesn't want Mimas to have all the fun!

For images of Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers) as the Death Star, see Flying by the 'Death Star' Moon.

Lit terrain seen here is on the leading hemisphere of Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across). North on Tethys is up and rotated 42 degrees to the right. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 28, 2012.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 43,000 miles (69,000 kilometers) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 77 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (4 kilometers) per pixel.

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

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute