17 September: Mimas (Moon of Saturn)

On this date in 1789 William Herschel discovered Mimas, a satellite of Saturn. It was the seventh moon of Saturn to be discovered.

1. Mimas is named after a son of Gaia and Uranus in Greek mythology. He was a giant, killed by Hephaestus with red hot metal missiles.
2. It's the smallest of Saturn's major moons, but it is responsible for the clearing enough material to make the gap between Saturn's largest rings, which measures 2980 miles or 4,800km.
3. Its diameter is 396km (246 miles) making it the smallest known astronomical body which is round in shape.
4. The surface area of Mimas is slightly less than the land area of Spain.
5. Mimas is on average 125,000 miles from Saturn and takes about 23 hours to orbit the planet.
6. Because it has a low density, it is believed to be made mostly of ice.
7. Its most distinctive feature is a giant crater which measures 130km (81 miles) across and has walls 5km (3 miles high). It has a central peak which could be up to 8km (5 miles) high. Whatever created it almost broke up Mimas – on the opposite side of the moon there are fractures which could have been caused by the shock waves. The crater is named Herschel, after William Herschel.
8. This crater makes Mimas look a bit like the Death Star in Star Wars. However, Mimas wasn't the inspiration for the Death Star, because the crater wasn't discovered until three years after the film was made.
9. The Cassini orbiter passed Mimas at 9,500km (5,900 miles) and sent back images which include a temperature map. Because of the way temperatures are represented on such maps, the warmer areas look like a giant Pac-Man about to devour the Herschel crater.
10. There is something odd about the interior of Mimas but we don't know what it is yet. It has a slightly wobbly orbit which means the interior isn't uniform. Scientists don't know if the core is made up of different materials or is oval in shape. They have ruled out the possibility of the wobble being caused by an ocean inside Mimas because if there was one, it would be frozen.

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