Tuesday, February 15, 2005

"That's no space-station, it's a moon!"

If only Obi-Wan had known. Cassini recently returned this image of Mimas, a 398Km moon of Saturn, photographed at a distance of 1.7 million Km. Fortunately that enormous crater is simply an impact crater named Herschel, not the reflector dish for a planet smashing weapon.

Thanks to Maggie Blukis for the link to the Guardian story.

UPDATE 15-Feb-2005: An even more recent image (16-Jan-2005) has been published, taken from a range of 213,000 Km which is a lot clearer. It doesn't show the crater at its Lucas-esque angle of the first though.