Mimas
Source: NASA
“That’s no moon…It’s a space station!” Actually, it’s a moon.
Death Star facts to be continued, but let’s learn up about this incredible little snowball first. Mimas, or Saturn I, everyone. Located just outside the main ring system, hangin’ out within the inner part of the E-ring. The tiniest + innermost of the Saturnian system of satellites with a surface area close to that of Spain. Kind of ovoid in shape, it has a super low density, suggesting its composition to be almost entirely water ice. Mimas is very obviously covered in craters, but what’s interesting is that the ones on the surface and the ones on the South Pole are different sizes (40< km compared to >20 km). Now, to get to why that matters: Mimas is practically a small, round-ish ice cube. Despite it being so close to MASSIVE Saturn, and its highly eccentric orbit, it is geologically inactive, as far as we can tell. So when we see a stark difference in something like craters, that’s a clue revealing that perhaps at one time there was some resurfacing going on (Go look up a thermal image of Mimas.. yes, that is real). THE most recognizable and distinguishable characteristic of Mimas is most certainly that huge freaking eyeball-death star-looking crater. The Herschel Crater, 80 miles wide, 6 miles deep. Now if you’re thinking, “Big deal, Ash, I can run six miles,” I say to you: “GOOD! I can’t.” But really, this is catastrophically crazy cool because this crater is HUGE in relation to the size of the moon. If we had a crater equivalent to Hershel, it would be wider than mother flipping Australia!! I know. God is so cool. Covering literally 1/3 of the surface of the moon, this impact nearly knocked Mimas out of the sky. There are chasmata (fractures/shock waves) on the opposite side of the moon from the impact, showing you how intense this whole ordeal was. It’s pretty surreal that Mimas has maintained its somewhat spherical shape, considering it’s taken some serious hits in its lifetime. One little quirk about this moon is that liberation, or a wobble. Why? 1.) Underground ocean? 2.) Wonky oval core? Scientists lean towards the second option, considering there is little-to-no evidence of an ocean hiding underneath. Whenever I paint these awesome moons, I always imagine myself floating in front of them, watching as they rotate. Or on the surface, imagining God reflect on His creation and say it is good. Standing on Mimas, you would be smack dab staring at a whole lot of Saturn. What a view?! Can you even imagine how spectacular? It’d be amazing… for a few minutes until you suffocated because: 153x weaker gravity, no sky, no atmosphere, and its freezing. For the smallest gravitationally round object we know of, its duty is pretty substantial. You know of Saturn’s rings, I’m sure. Well, if you’ve ever heard of the Cassini Division (gap between Saturn’s two widest rings), you should know that Mimas is responsible for that. Tiny Mimas. Okay, now for you Star Wars nerds: the death star?!?!? What’s so nuts is that this was pure coincidence. The film was made a whole three years before a resolved picture of Mimas was made available with its huge crater and all. The Empire Strikes Back was out for four months when Voyager 1 returned a high resolution image of the moon. So in actuality, Mimas is more than double the size of the theoretical star destroying machine. Vader’s ride has a super laser, while Mimas has a mountain nearly the size of Mt. Everest. Freaking sweet.