Space
NASA Cassini Captures New Spectacular Image of Saturn's Two Moons
Catherine Griffin
First Posted: Jul 31, 2013 01:19 PM EDT
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has taken some spectacular images in the past. Now, it's captured Saturn's moons, Mimas and Pandora. The new image shows the cratered and pocked surfaces of these orbiting bodies, revealing a little bit more about these moons.
Pandora is tiny in comparison to its larger sibling. In fact, it's so small that it lacks the sufficient gravity to pull itself into a round shape. Instead, it looks like a bit like a wobbly oval from the latest image. Mimas, in contrast, is well rounded, pocked by craters from debris that have struck it in the past. This moon holds enough gravitational weight in order to be responsible for the Cassini Division, a separation between the A and B rings of Saturn that's about 3,000 miles wide.
In this latest image, the view looks towards the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Mimas, which is 246 miles across. North on Mimas is up and rotated 28 degrees to the right. The picture itself was taken in blue light with the help of Cassini's narrow-angle camera, captured at a distance of about 690,000 miles. Pandora, in contrast, was at a distance of about 731,000 miles. In the Cassini picture, you can see a massive crater on the surface of Mimas. This was the result of an impact that nearly split the moon apart in the past.
These aren't the only two moons orbiting Saturn, though. There are over 50 natural satellites orbiting Saturn--and those are only the ones that have been discovered thus far. One of them, Titan, is so large that it affects the orbits of other nearby moons. It also has its own, nitrogen-rich atmosphere which is similar to the Earth's atmosphere of long ago before biology took hold.
Want to see more images from Cassini and learn more about Saturn? Check out NASA's website here.
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First Posted: Jul 31, 2013 01:19 PM EDT
NASA's Cassini spacecraft has taken some spectacular images in the past. Now, it's captured Saturn's moons, Mimas and Pandora. The new image shows the cratered and pocked surfaces of these orbiting bodies, revealing a little bit more about these moons.
Pandora is tiny in comparison to its larger sibling. In fact, it's so small that it lacks the sufficient gravity to pull itself into a round shape. Instead, it looks like a bit like a wobbly oval from the latest image. Mimas, in contrast, is well rounded, pocked by craters from debris that have struck it in the past. This moon holds enough gravitational weight in order to be responsible for the Cassini Division, a separation between the A and B rings of Saturn that's about 3,000 miles wide.
In this latest image, the view looks towards the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Mimas, which is 246 miles across. North on Mimas is up and rotated 28 degrees to the right. The picture itself was taken in blue light with the help of Cassini's narrow-angle camera, captured at a distance of about 690,000 miles. Pandora, in contrast, was at a distance of about 731,000 miles. In the Cassini picture, you can see a massive crater on the surface of Mimas. This was the result of an impact that nearly split the moon apart in the past.
These aren't the only two moons orbiting Saturn, though. There are over 50 natural satellites orbiting Saturn--and those are only the ones that have been discovered thus far. One of them, Titan, is so large that it affects the orbits of other nearby moons. It also has its own, nitrogen-rich atmosphere which is similar to the Earth's atmosphere of long ago before biology took hold.
Want to see more images from Cassini and learn more about Saturn? Check out NASA's website here.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone