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Archived Post

This post is an archive from my Facebook account. I deleted my Facebook account in 2018 and have archived all the direct posts to my own timeline here. You can view the full archive here.

I see your death-star-pluto picture and raise you this cosmic coincidence. Star Wars was released in 1977. Saturn’s moon Mimas was discovered in 1789, but we had no idea what it looked like until the Voyager flyby in 1980, three years after Star Wars.

Here’s what it looks like.

Fun fact: That crater is the largest relative to the planet/moon in the solar system at 1/3rd the diameter of the moon. The central peak is 3-5 miles high making it taller than Everest base to peak despite being on a very tiny moon. It is so large whatever caused it came close to blowing Mimas apart. There are even stress fractures on the opposite side. It must have been quite a show. Maybe it was hit by a not-quite-fully armed and operational space station.