One of many moons, little Mimas seems to hover above the vast sweeping rings of Saturn in this Cassini image. (It actually lies in the same plane as the rings.) The orbiter was nearly 2 million miles away from Mimas when this photo was taken last September. 

Saturn has 52 officially named moons. Mimas is a medium-sized one, and has the distinction of having a large crater – named Herschel – in its northern hemisphere which takes up almost a third of its entire diameter with a 3.7-mile-high mountain in the middle…the ancient scar of an monumental meteor strike.

Saturn’s rings, hundreds of thousands of miles wide, are only about 30 feet thick and are comprised of particles of rock, dust and ice. They are one of the most recognizable features of any planet in the solar system and we are learning new things about them every day, thanks to the Cassini orbiter and the data it sends back.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute