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Peeping Mimas
Saturn’s moon Mimas peeps out from behind the larger moon Dione in this view from the Cassini spacecraft.
Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across) is near the bottom center of the image. Saturn’s rings are also visible in the top right.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 12, 2011. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 377,000 miles (606,000 kilometers) from Mimas. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 56,000 miles (91,000 kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 42 degrees. Image scale is 1,773 feet (541 meters) per pixel on Dione.
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.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
