That's no moon, that's a space station!

[Susano]

[Cancer]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

As it approaches firing position

 

Looking down the maw

[Erkenfresh]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

Nahh, the light is shining on it from the opposite side so it can't be true.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

... Wtf?

[Susano]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

... Wtf?

 

It gets better, Mimas was discovered in 1980, three years after Star Wars!

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

[chuckles] Yeah, the similarity hit me many years ago...

[keithcurtis]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

I remember this being referred to at the time of the first imaging as the "Death Star Moon"

 

Keith "Cause, like, it made good copy" Curtis

[theltemes]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

Proving once again that life indeed imitates art.

 

[Lucius]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

It gets better' date=' Mimas was discovered in 1980, three years [u']after[/u] Star Wars!

 

I believe that Mimas was discovered in 1789. However, I think you're right in that the distinctive crater that makes it resemble the Death Star was discovered only in 1980.

 

I wonder though - if there had never been a Star Wars, would it look like a space station to us?

 

I don't know, but I think it would still look weird - both because the crater is so large in comparison to Mimas itself (how did it take that impact and not come apart?) and because it has that strange peak in the center that makes it look like a radar dish or something....

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary takes another look at the Moon of Earth....

[Susano]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

I don't know' date=' but I think it would still look weird - both because the crater is so large in comparison to Mimas itself (how did it take that impact and not come apart?) and because it has that strange peak in the center that makes it look like a radar dish or something....[/quote']

 

Apparently, it was a very near thing, as there are stress fractures on the far side of Mimas resulting from the impact.

[Nyrath]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

At the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, when the images from Voyager were coming in hot off the press and that image of Mimas was displayed, one of the science fiction authors quipped "Well, we've located the Death Star."

 

That was later incorporated in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's novel FOOTFALL (1985).

[Nyrath]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

And if you want more suspiciously artificial looking moons, noted moonbat Richard Hoagland wants you to look at Saturn's moon Iapetus.

http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm

Scroll down to the bottom to see the gigantic wall along the equator.

[Cancer]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

That equatorial casting-flaw ridge is just wierder than all get-out. Looks like a cheap rubber ball, like you get in the pet stores for throwing for your dogs.

 

... though I don't like to think about the size of those ball-chasing dogs in this context...

[Zeropoint]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

The "Enterprise Mission" guy makes a surprisingly plausible argument for the artificial nature of Iapetus, and a THOROUGHLY convincing argument for closer study.

[Dale A. Ward]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

It's a very interesting tale... but I think the guy's fruitier than Carmen Miranda's hat!

 

[Nyrath]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

The "Enterprise Mission" guy makes a surprisingly plausible argument for the artificial nature of Iapetus' date=' and a THOROUGHLY convincing argument for closer study.[/quote']

 

Hoagland is a noted raving moonbat (he's the guy behind the "face on mars" whoopla).

 

But that in no way stops one from using the contents of that website as the basis for a killer Star Hero campaign, and printing out a few choice images as visual aides for the players.

[Zeropoint]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

After having read more of his site, I do have to agree that he sounds like a loon.

 

If he'd just just laid out the basics for suspecting that Iapetus was artificial, called for a closer look, and left it at that, it would have been a lot more believable.

[keithcurtis]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

There's a reason that Arthur C. Clarke chose Saturn for the destination in the Book version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's always been known to have a dramatic albedo shift depending on which hemisphere was facing us.

He made some business about he age of the rings, and the age of the human species, too.

 

Keith "No giant monoliths. Sigh..." Curtis

 

PS. I hadn't seen the Wall, before. It looks like a joke God would play on astronomers. "Explain that, Humans."

[Nyrath]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

There's a reason that Arthur C. Clarke chose Saturn for the destination in the Book version of 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's always been known to have a dramatic albedo shift depending on which hemisphere was facing us.

He made some business about he age of the rings, and the age of the human species, too.

 

Here are the relevant quotes from Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

"Japetus is unique in the Solar System - you know this already, of course, but like all the astronomers of the last three hundred years, you've probably given it little thought. So let me remind you that Cassini - who discovered Japetus in 1671 - also observed that it was six times brighter on one side of its orbit than the other.

 

"This is an extraordinary ratio, and there has never been a satisfactory explanation for it. Japetus is so small - about eight hundred miles in diameter - that even in the lunar telescopes its disk is barely visible. But there seems to be a brilliant, curiously symmetrical spot on one face, and this may be connected with TMA-1. I sometimes think that Japetus has been flashing at us like a cosmic heliograph for three hundred years, and we've been too stupid to understand its message.

 

As long ago as 1945, a British astronomer had pointed out that the rings were ephemeral; gravitational forces were at work which would soon destroy them. Taking this argument backward in time, it therefore followed that they had been created only recently - a mere two or three million years ago.

 

But no one had ever given the slightest thought to the curious coincidence that the rings of Saturn had been born at the same time as the human race.

 

And in his short story "Jupiter V", he suggests that the inner Jovan moon Amalthea is actually a huge spaceship.

[Cancer]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

Actually, once I realized that Iapetus was tidally locked (as were nearly all the moons), I found myself wondering why only Iapetus was the way it was, with one side brighter than the other. Everyone's used to thinking about tidal locking meaning one face is permanently facing the central planet, but it also means there's a definite leading face and trailing face as the moon moves in its orbit. If there's small junk floating around in the planetary system, necessarily it will get plastered on the leading face.

 

I remember one of those 2001 quotes, but not the other. Of course, I last read in 1970 or 1971.

[Nyrath]

Re: That's no moon, that's a space station!

 

Everyone's used to thinking about tidal locking meaning one face is permanently facing the central planet' date=' but it also means there's a definite leading face and trailing face as the moon moves in its orbit. If there's small junk floating around in the planetary system, necessarily it will get plastered on the leading face.[/quote']

I seem to recall some speculation that the Saturnian moon Phoebe was the source of the dark material on Hyperion and the leading hemisphere of Iapetus.