Saturn and its Satellites Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas

Saturn and its satellites Tethys (outer left), Enceladus (inner left) and Mimas (right of rings) are seen in this mosaic of images taken by NASA's Voyager 1 on Oct. 30, 1980 from a distance of 18 million kilometers (11 million miles). The soft, velvety appearance of the low-contrast banded structure and increased reflection of blue light near the perimeter of the Saturn disk are due to scattering by a haze layer above the planet's cloud deck. Features larger than 350 kilometers (220 miles) are visible. The projected width of the rings at the center of the disk is 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles), which provides a scale for estimating feature sizes on the image.