The Cassini has never let us down. Its Saturn probe has captured an incredible image of Saturn’s moon Mimas in front of the rings. Mimas is Saturn’s weird moon and it resembles the Death Star. The moon is found floating in front of Saturn’s magnificent rings. Cassini has taken this image from a far off distance — nearly twice as far from Mimas as the Earth is from the Moon. This image exaggerates the effect somewhat, the top part of the moon as seen here is in shadow. And thus it makes Mimas look more egg-shaped than it really is. Given its 400 kilometer average diameter, the equatorial diameter of the moon is 10% larger than the polar diameter, which is a lot! In contrast, the earth’s equatorial diameter is only about 0.6% bigger than the polar diameter. Thus, the Earth is far more round than Mimas. Uhnlike Earth, Mimas doesn’t spin nearly fast enough for that to be the reason of its shape.



Via: Bad Astronomy1707