Meet Saturn's next-door neighbor Out of the dozens of moons that orbit Saturn, the one that’s closest to the gas giant is Mimas, first discovered in 1789 by English astronomer William Herschel. Mimas is about 115,000 miles (186,000 km) from Saturn—half the distance from the Earth to the Moon—and takes just 22.5 hours to make a lap around the giant planet. Mimas can be seen at the very bottom of this image, which was taken by our Cassini spacecraft in 2005. Behind it, Saturn’s northern latitudes shine in a cool blue, with shadows from its rings forming long, dark lines on the atmosphere. Image description: The surface of Saturn takes up most of this image, with thin, dark lines arcing down and to the right over a periwinkle-colored atmosphere. At the very bottom, just left of center, the moon Mimas appears as a gray, slightly dimpled circle. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute #NASA #Space #Universe #Astrophotography #Saturn #Mimas #Cassini