Whatever hit
Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn‘s smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have
destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is featured here. Mimas‘ low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of
rock – so it is accurately described as a big dirty snowball. The featured image was taken during the closest-ever flyby of the robot spacecraft
Cassini past Mimas in 2010
while in orbit around Saturn.
Image & info via APOD
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Cassini
Source: Mimas:
Small Moon with a Big Crater – Scents of Science
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