Saturn Moon's Heat Glow Looks Just Like Pac-Man

[mickw]

As if dominating one 1980s pop icon wasn't enough, Saturn's moon Mimas – which bears a striking resemblance to the Death Star in "Star Wars" – has a heat glow that looks like Pac-Man chomping down on some video game chow.

New high-resolution images and a temperature map of Mimas taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft revealed the surprising patterns on the surface of the small moon. The odd Pac-Man-like feature, along with striking bands of light and dark in crater walls, were seen by during its closest flyby of the moon on Feb. 13.

The new photos also take a look at the moon's enormous scar, called Herschel Crater, and has often been said to give Mimas a Death Star look.

More:   Space.com

[Rick]

Saturn Moon May Hide a 'Fossil' Core or an Ocean

A new study focused on the interior of Saturn's icy moon Mimas suggests its cratered surface hides one of two intriguing possibilities: Either the moon's frozen core is shaped something like a football, or the satellite contains a liquid water ocean.

Researchers used numerous images of Mimas taken by NASA's Cassini mission to determine how much the moon wobbles as it orbits Saturn. They then evaluated several possible models for how its interior might be arranged, finding two possibilities that fit their data.The study is published in the Oct. 17 issue of the journal Science.

"The data suggest that something is not right, so to speak, inside Mimas," said Radwan Tajeddine, a Cassini research associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and lead author on the paper. "The amount of wobble we measured is double what was predicted."

More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4342