Herschel Dead-On
February 10, 2005 Full-Res: PIA06582
Saturn's moon Mimas has many large craters, but its Herschel crater
dwarfs all the rest. This large crater 130 kilometers wide (80
miles) has a prominent central peak, seen here almost exactly on
the terminator. This crater is the moon's most prominent feature,
and the impact that formed it probably nearly destroyed Mimas.
Mimas is 398 kilometers (247 miles) across.
This view is predominantly of the leading hemisphere of Mimas. The
image has been rotated so that north on Mimas is up.
This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle
camera on Jan. 16, 2005, at a distance of approximately 213,000
kilometers (132,000 miles) from Mimas and at a
Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 84 degrees. Resolution in
the original image was about 1.3 kilometers (0.8 miles) per pixel.
A combination of spectral filters sensitive to ultraviolet and
polarized light was used to obtain this view. Contrast was enhanced
and the image was magnified by a factor of two to aid
visibility.
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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder,
Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For images visit the
Cassini imaging team home page http://ciclops.org .
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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okay... does this Saturnian moon look distressingly like the Death
Star or what? 
