Friday, February 18, 2005

Saturn's moon is Death Star's twin



Saturn's diminutive moon, Mimas, poses as the Death Star - the planet-destroying space station from the movie Star Wars - in an image recently captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

A giant crater 138 kilometres across dominates the landscape of Mimas and represents almost one-third of the moon's diameter.

Scientists first noticed Mimas's resemblance to the Death Star when the twin Voyager spacecraft flew past Saturn in 1980 and 1981. The second film in the movie series - The Empire Strikes Back - had just hit movie theatres, recalls Cassini deputy project scientist Linda Spilker.

Now, Cassini has taken an even better image than those from the Voyager probes with its narrow-angle camera. It snapped the photo on 16 January 2005 from 213,000 km away at a resolution of 1.3 km per pixel.

Is this really news? A big thing out Of nothing or just 5 minutes of fun?, does any one care?

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