This Cassini image shows a nearly half-full Mimas (a moon that is 398 kilometers, or 247 miles, across) beyond Saturn's rings. The image was contrast-enhanced to make visible the reflected light from Saturn that illuminates the dark side of Mimas and to improve the visibility of the faint F ring.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Sept. 11, 2004, at a distance of 8.9 million kilometers (5.5 million miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 83 degrees. The image scale is 53 kilometers (33 miles) 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 Cassini-Huygens 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 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 .
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.
