Saturn's scarred moon Mimas is caught partway through crossing the ring plane of its planetary parent Saturn in this image taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft currently in orbit around the planet.

Cassini used its narrow-angle camera to catch this view of Mimas, a small icy moon just 247 miles (397 kilometers) across with a distinctive – and large – crater called Herschel that gives it a Death Star-like quality.

In this image, Herschel – an 80-mile (130-kilometer) impact relic - appears on the eastern (right-hand) limb of the moon as it drifts upward across a background striped by Saturn’s rings.

This image is one of 37 taken by Cassini in succession over about 20 minutes, which astronomers later assembled in a brief movie to illustrate the passage. In that movie, the Mimas appeared to rotate very slightly, though the little satellite – like Earth’s own Moon – consistently presents the same hemisphere toward Saturn. The Saturn-facing orientation means a Mimas day is equal to the time it takes the moon to orbit its parent, about 22.5 hours.

Cassini took this image while flying past Mimas at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.7 million kilometers) on Feb. 20, 2005. The scale shown is about six miles (10 kilometers) per pixel.

To view the combined movie of Mimas’ ring passage, click here.

-- SPACE.com Staff

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

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