Mimas, the satellite of Saturn that has a curious resemblance to the Death Star

@ElentirENG ES 7·23·2024 · 23:32 0

In addition to being a planet of enormous beauty due to its golden appearance and its rings, Saturn is the center of more than a hundred worlds.

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Currently, a total of 146 natural satellites of Saturn are known, making it the planet with the most satellites in the entire known part of the Solar System. Some of its satellites are as large as planets. For example, Saturn's largest satellite, Titan, is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only known satellite that has a significant atmosphere of its own.

A little-known satellite of Saturn is Mimas, named after a giant in Greek mythology who was the son of the god Uranus and the goddess Gaia. Like another more popular satellite of the golden planet, Enceladus, Mimas was discovered by the German astronomer William Herschel, famous for being also the discoverer of the planet Uranus.

Mimas belongs to the group of small satellites of Saturn. It has a diameter of 396.4 km, very small if we compare it with the Moon, whose diameter is 3,474.8 km. In the first photo of this article Mimas appears, very tiny, beneath the rings of Saturn, on the left.

Among Saturn's satellites, Mimas ranks 70th in size, despite which it generates a major alteration in Saturn's rings known as the Cassini Division, forming a 4,800 km region located between Ring A and Ring B.

Furthermore, Mimas is the smallest known celestial body with a spherical appearance generated by its own gravity. However, as is often the case with many satellites, the surface of Mimas, made up mostly of ice (and under which it is believed that there could be a liquid ocean), is not uniform and has a very curious detail. which was not discovered until 1980, thanks to the Voyager 1 space probe.

That detail is the Herschel crater, located approximately on the equator of this satellite and which has an approximate diameter of 139 km. The name of the crater was given in honor of the discoverer of the satellite, and it is believed that it could have been caused by a strong impact from another celestial body that was about to destroy Mimas. In fact, it is one of the largest craters known to humans in relation to the size of the celestial body in which it was formed.

The appearance of Mimas has stimulated the imagination of many fans of the Star Wars saga, since this satellite has a curious resemblance to the Death Star, the famous space station of the Galactic Empire that appeared in the first film of that story, released in 1977.

That crater was not known until three years after the film's release, so George Lucas and the rest of the Star Wars team had no information about the existence of a world that looked like that when they designed that one. Spacial station. Let's hope Mimas never shoots anything at us...

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Photos: NASA / Starwars.com.