The Shadow of Mimas

The moon Mimas casts a shadow and creates a single blemish on the kingly crescent of Saturn.

Mimas is not shown in this view, but its shadow can be seen on the planet just north of the rings and their shadow. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on October 25, 2009 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.5 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 116 degrees. Image scale is 144 kilometers (90 miles) per pixel.

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute