Mimas is a small moon with one enormous crater, Herschel, a third as wide as the moon itself.
That crater makes Mimas look just like the Death Star from Star Wars. The film came out in 1977, three years before anyone had seen a close-up of Mimas.
The impact that made Herschel nearly broke Mimas apart.
In 2024 scientists announced a surprise: a hidden ocean under its ice, formed only within the last 25 million years. Mimas had seemed like the least likely moon of all to have one.
If you stood here
Standing in Herschel crater, its walls would rise about 5 km around you, with a peak about 6 km tall in the middle.
- Width
- 396 km
- Goes round Saturn
- every 22.6 hours
- One day
- The same: it always shows Saturn one face
- Temperature
- about −200 °C
- 70 kg on Earth weighs
- 457 grams here
