What makes Mimas special?

What makes Mimas special?

Mimas is an icy moon that’s 246 miles wide and whose most distinctive feature is the 88-mile-wide Herschel crater – a giant Cyclops-like indentation that makes the moon resemble the planet-obliterating superweapon from “Star Wars” that’s known as the Death Star.

What is the surface of Mimas like?

Most of the Mimas surface is saturated with impact craters ranging in size up to greater than 25 miles (40 kilometers) in diameter. However, the craters in the South Pole region of Mimas are generally 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) in diameter or less.

What type of moon is Mimas?

Discovery
Inclination	1.574° (to Saturn’s equator)
Satellite of	Saturn
Physical characteristics
Dimensions	415.6 × 393.4 × 381.2 km (0.0311 Earths)

Discovery
Inclination	1.574° (to Saturn’s equator)
Satellite of	Saturn
Physical characteristics
Dimensions	415.6 × 393.4 × 381.2 km (0.0311 Earths)

What was found on Mimas?

Why is Mimas called the Death Star?

Mimas, Saturn’s cryptic-looking moon, is awfully deceptive. The small moon is dominated by an 80-mile-wide crater, giving it the appearance of the grim Star Wars Death Star — a space station equipped with a planet-destroying weapon.

Is Mimas icy?

But unlike other icy moons known to possess under-ice oceans, Mimas has a surface that offers no hints of cracks or melting that might suggest sloshiness within. It also stretched scientific credulity that the interior of a moon as small as Mimas could be warm enough for an ocean to remain unfrozen.

Is there water on Mimas?

Saturn’s moon Mimas may be the newest, if not the most unlikely member of the solar system’s family of icy bodies with internal liquid water oceans, according to a new study by Alyssa Rose Rhoden of the Southwest Research Institute and Matthew E.

Is the moon core hot?

At its very centre, the Moon has a solid iron core with a temperature of between 1,327°C and 1427°C. This is hot enough to create a surrounding molten liquid iron outer core, but not hot enough to warm the surface.

Is Mimas bigger than the moon?

Discovered in 1789 by Herschel. Mimas’ low density (1.17) indicates that it is composed mostly of water ice with only a small amount of rock. The surface of Mimas is dominated by an impact crater 130 km across, known as Herschel; it’s almost 1/3 of the diameter of the entire moon.

Is Mimas a Death Star?

Mimas is a real “Death Star” in the Solar System.

What is a smiling moon called?

A wet moon (also called a Cheshire moon) is the visual phenomenon when the “horns” of the crescent Moon point up at an angle, away from the horizon, so that the crescent takes on the appearance of a bowl or smile.

Did Mimas inspire the Death Star?

“The appearance of Mimas was not seen in detail until the Voyager spacecraft flew through the Saturn system in 1980, so the design of the Death Star was not influenced by Mimas,” a spokesperson at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told Space.com.

Why is Mimas weird inside?

There’s something strange going on below the surface of Saturn’s Death Star-looking moon Mimas, a new study suggests. Mimas’ rotation and its orbit around Saturn make the moon look like it’s rocking and back forth and oscillating similar to the way a pendulum swings. That rocking motion is called libration.

How long is a day on Mimas?

One day on Mimas is equal to 23 hours.

How far is Mimas from Earth?

Who ran the first Death Star?

As a loyal protégé of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, Tarkin became one of the most ardent supporters of the newly declared Empire. Palpatine put Tarkin in charge of construction of the Death Star, a secret project that would take nearly two decades to complete.

Is Mimas habitable?

Scientists say Mimas’ ocean might support life, even if it is encased in ice. “Because the surface of Mimas is heavily cratered, we thought it was just a frozen block of ice,” Dr. Alyssa Rhoden, a specialist in the geophysics of icy satellites, said in a statement.

How big is the Death Star?

Various sources state that the first Death Star has a diameter of between 140 and 160 kilometers. There is a broader range of figures for the second Death Star’s diameter, ranging from 160 to 900 kilometers.

What makes the moon Miranda special?

One of the most remarkable features on Miranda is known as the “chevron”. It is a series of light and dark grooves arranged in a v-shape. This large feature dominates most images of the moon. Miranda also contains fault canyons as deep as 12 miles (20 km) deep.

What is unique about the moon Miranda?

Unlike the other four main Uranian satellites, Miranda’s orbit is slightly inclined. Of the five Uranian moons known before Voyager 2 visited the planet, Miranda is the smallest and closest to the planet.

What makes Mimas a distinct moon?

Mimas’ most distinctive feature is the giant impact crater Herschel, named in honor of William Herschel (the discoverer of Uranus, its moons Oberon, and Titania, and the Cronian moons Enceladus and Mimas). This large crater gives Mimas the appearance of the “Death Star” from Star Wars.

What is special about the moon Titan?

Titan is bigger than Earth’s moon, and larger than even the planet Mercury. This mammoth moon is the only moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere, and it’s the only world besides Earth that has standing bodies of liquid, including rivers, lakes and seas, on its surface.