Latest article is up here

Good close Titan flyby, with more radar coverage and ISS observations, mid-range Mimas imaging, and a followup observation of 'propellers' in the A ring amongst other goodies.

Notable that there seem to be astrometric observations from long-range of the smaller moons in the Saturnian system on every orbit - I wonder how constrained the orbital characteristics of these moons now are, and whether this campaign is planned for the rest of the mission?

Jase

Great!

In the context of Mimas this is actually a very close flyby - the second closest flyby of the entire mission so far if I remember correctly. And the terrain in view is relatively poorly imaged so this is going to be an interesting flyby.

There can be more interesting results, such as this one, which I noticed cited on wikipedia:
http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0611590
... but that's from a telescope. Perhaps they've found that it might be worthwhile to do it from Cassini. The discussion include speculation about a source for the Iapetus dark material not included in the conclusions, which have some other interesting tidbits. Repeat with Cassini, and perhaps learn a lot more than simply the orbit with better precision.

Just because I can't get enough of this Mimas shape model, here is an animated gif of preview frames for the upcoming flyby:

http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/imag...mas_Preview.gif

Nice preview. So, going to fill in that bald spot, then? That should just about do it for Mimas.

Agreed - I think the mission planners contend that sub-10,000km is a 'close' flyby, but this one will be a good-gap-filler. We also have 3 flybys of Mimas closer than this upcoming one before mission-end to look forward to.

Some good news. The Mimas raw images are now available. They include some Saturn shine images too. It looks like that the entire North Polar area of Mimas will be imaged at high resolution here.

False colour, two-footprint, NAC view of Mimas, made from CLEAR, GREEN and UV filtered frames:

Click to view attachment

Great work as always Ian - thanks. I refuse to become blase about the views we're getting every day from Saturn - fabulous stuff.

I noticed a strange landform in one of the craters near the terminator in the raws (see below).
This view is cropped from image N00190674, and there seems to be a 'lump' there.
Primary illumination is from the 'West' (although I've rotated the image for ease of viewing)

Anybody any ideas what it might be?

Jase

It looks at first glance like material that has slumped out of the smaller tilted crater bisected by the upper edge of your white box, down into the bigger one. Just a guess!

Do we have coverage of this area from another viewpoint and with a different illumination angle? I also think it looks like slumped material.

I have the same guess as ngunn. Could the 'slump' have been a result of the other impact?

Looks like a slump from the mutual rim of Ban (the younger, sharper crater on the left in jasedm's image) and Bors (the older crater). Odd shape I have to admit.

Here is a view from Rev126. Bors and Ban are near the top. You should be able to easily pick out Ban and Bors is next to it to the left.

Click to view attachment

Thanks all.
Agreed, it looks like an ice-alanche, but with a big chunk of material having slumped down-gradient as opposed to solely loose 'rubble'
Mimas' low gravity coupled with ice at -300 degrees fahrenheit will produce counter-intuitive results I suppose.

Some pretty mangled topography in that area!

Ostensibly it appears to be a mound resulting from a mass wasting event -- landslide deposited a mound at the base, which is illuminated by the low solar angle. However, following up and to the right of this are an apparently connected series of oddities which make me wonder whether there is a long underlying fracture which these surface features are interacting with (partially collapsing into?). Neat.

A dramatic raw image that caught my eye: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/N00191052.jpg