Contact: Preston Dyches
preston@ciclops.org
720-974-5859
Space Science Institute

Mimas...and Titan Beyond

Caption: Titan, Saturn's largest moon (5,150 kilometers, 3,200 miles across) and Mimas in the foreground (397 kilometers, 247 miles across) are seen together in this view from Cassini.

Titan’s gravity is weaker than Earth’s, so the moon's atmosphere is quite extended – a quality hinted at in this view.

Part of Mimas’ dark side is illuminated by reflected light from nearby Saturn.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 3, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.6 million kilometers (2.2 million miles) from Titan and 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Mimas. Both moons are seen at a Sun-moon-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 110 degrees. The image scale is 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel on Titan and 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel on Mimas.

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 imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team & NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Usage Restrictions: Image is in the public domain. Appropriate credit is requested.