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Tiny Moon is No Space Station

Posted by michael on from the stay-on-target dept.

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."

8 of 59 comments (clear)

  1. I feel a disturbance in the 'Net... by Zarf · · Score: 4, Funny

    as if thousands of web-browsers cried out and slashdotted a server.

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    [signature]
  2. That's no moon... by kyz · · Score: 4, Funny

    actually, no, sorry, it is a moon.

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    Does my bum look big in this?
  3. 1997 Star Wars? by JHromadka · · Score: 4, Funny
    Although the icy moon bears a striking resemblance to the fictional 1997 'Death Star' from the Star Wars film by George Lucas, this low-density satellite probably had a more likely past not as a weapon or space station, but instead as a victim of one catastrophic day in its ancient history. That day Mimas came closer to dying rather than committing any planet-scale homicide.

    1997? I know Lucas would like for us to forget about that "quaint" 70's version of the film, I didn't think he'd get scientific institutions to buy it!

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    "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." -- John Ashcroft
  4. Size by NIK282000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Oddly enough the death star would fit nicely into the crater. The crater is about 130km across and the death star one is 120km across.

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    Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
  5. That's no synopsis. . . by Bastian · · Score: 4, Interesting

    . . .that's a plagarism!

    Really, editors. Read the articles and if the submitter ripped part of it in place of writing their own synopsis, give credit where credit is due.

  6. Death star sites slashdoted by erice · · Score: 5, Funny

    The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant, next to the power of the Slashdot effect.

  7. Compare by Scarblac · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:Compare by Gogo+Dodo · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.