Mimas - cratered surface

This image of Saturn's moon Mimas was taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on Nov. 12, 1980 and shows the heavily and uniformly cratered surface of the satellite. The photograph, taken at a range of 208,000 kilometers (129,000 miles), shows features as small as about five kilometers (three miles). Topography is best seen along the terminator where it is enhanced by the low sun angle. The apparent crater density decrease toward the left of the picture is not real and results from a change in sun angle. A long, narrow trough about five kilometers (three miles) across is seen to cross from lower limb to the center of the image where it terminates. A second trough originates near the center and extends to the upper limb, where it appears to branch into a series of smaller troughs. The Voyager Project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.