Top 5 Facts: Mimas
1. A titan – Mimas is named after one of the titans, a race of gods and goddesses in Greek Mythology. Saturn (or Kronos in Greek mythology) was the leader of the Titans.
2. Arthurian craters – With the exception of the Herschel Crater, which was named after Mimas’s discoverer William Herschel, all the craters are named after Arthurian characters.
3. Death Star moon – Although Mimas looks a lot like the Death Star of the Star Wars films, the first film was released before images taken by the Cassini spacecraft ever revealed the resemblance.
4. Pac-Man – A map of daytime temperatures on Mimas shows warm areas that resemble the Eighties arcade game character Pac-Man, with the crater as the dot.
5. Perturbation – Mimas’s gravitational pull perturbs, or throws off, the orbits of some smaller moons. It causes the orbit of Methone, just four km in diameter, to vary by up to 20km.