Tiny Moon is No Space Station

An anonymous reader writes "With today's image release, Cassini's tour of Saturn's remarkable system of 31 moons has taken the probe past one of the ringed planet's natural wonders: Mimas. The 250 mile wide satellite suffered a catastrophic impact that opened a wound one third of its diameter and nearly split the moon in half. Today, Mimas bears a striking resemblance to the original Star Wars' Death Star, which wreaked havoc on planets using its laser-focusing dish. In place of the laser dish, Mimas carries a crater peak the size of Mount Everest."

Comments

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[Scarblac]

This picture is by Voyager, in 1980: APOD 990425. Doesn't look much worse to me (IANAA). No idea how close to Mimas Voyager was compared to Cassini, of course.

Re:Compare

[Gogo Dodo]

The caption for the original photo, it says that it was taken from 540,000 kilometers (324,000 miles) away. The Cassini image was taken at 1.7 million kilometers (1 million miles) away.

Re:1997 Star Wars?

[iainl]

The circular explosion effect is even called a 'Praxis Ring' at ILM, after they first created the effect for the beginning of Star Trek VI. They've since used it all over the shop.