Shirin is an impact crater

Impact crater

In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with a larger body...

 located on the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Saturn

Saturn

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...

's moon Enceladus

Enceladus (moon)

Enceladus is the sixth-largest of the moons of Saturn. It was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. Until the two Voyager spacecraft passed near it in the early 1980s very little was known about this small moon besides the identification of water ice on its surface...

. Shirin was first observed in Cassini images during that mission's March 2005 flyby of Enceladus. It is located at 1.6° South Latitude

Latitude

In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...

, 169.0° West Longitude

Longitude

Longitude is a geographic coordinate that specifies the east-west position of a point on the Earth's surface. It is an angular measurement, usually expressed in degrees, minutes and seconds, and denoted by the Greek letter lambda ....

, and is eight kilometers across. Cassini observed several, narrow, southwest-northeast trending fractures cutting across Shirin, forming canyons up to a hundred meters deep along the crater's rim. Several wider fractures are seen nearby, however these appeared to form before the Shirin impact since the crater appears to cover these fractures as they appear it.

Shirin

Shirin

Shirin was a wife of the Sassanid Persian Shahanshah , Khosrau II. In the revolution after the death of Khosrau's father Hormizd IV, the General Bahram Chobin took power over the Persian empire. Shirin fled with Khosrau to Syria where they lived under the protection of Byzantine emperor Maurice...

 is named after the wife of Persian Sassanid king Khosrau II

Khosrau II

250px|thumb|Khosrau II 250px|thumb|Khosrau II 250px|thumb|Khosrau II (Khosrow II, Chosroes II, or Xosrov II in classical sources, sometimes called Parvez, "the Ever Victorious" – (in Persian: خسرو پرویز), was the twenty-second Sassanid King of Persia, reigning from 590 to 628...

 and one of the primary characters in the tale "Khusrau and Shirin and the Fisherman" from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

The Book of One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age...

. Khusrau

Khusrau (crater)

Khusrau is an impact crater on the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Saturn's moon Enceladus. Khusrau was first observed in Cassini images during that mission's March 2005 flyby of Enceladus. It is located at 2.9° South Latitude, 182.4° West Longitude, and is 12 kilometers across...

, a crater named after her husband, is located to the west of Shirin crater.