Saturday, August 06, 2005

Cassini gets photo of Saturn's "Death Star Moon"

This is a great picture. The Cassini spacecraft recently got a picture of one of Saturn's moons that looks like the Death Star:

The great eye of Saturn's moon Mimas (MY-muss), a 130-kilometer-wide (80-mile) impact crater called Herschel, stares out from the battered moon in this raw image taken by the Cassini spacecraft during a flyby on Aug. 2.

The Herschel crater is the moon's most prominent feature, and the impact that formed it probably nearly destroyed Mimas. Cassini flew by Mimas at 62,700 kilometers (38,800 miles) above the moon's surface, bringing it closer to the little moon than ever before.

No comments:

Post a Comment