The oblate shape of Mimas is presented in this Cassini image. The moon appears flattened at the poles with an equatorial bulge.
To learn more about this small moon, see PIA07534. Herschel Crater, seen on the left, is 130 kilometers, or 80 miles, wide.
This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Mimas (396 kilometers, 246 miles across). North on Mimas is up and rotated 44 degree to the left. The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 25, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 594,000 kilometers (369,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 11 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. 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.