Cassini Camera Captures Saturn's Moons Mimas and Pandora -- or Death Star?

Mimas and Pandora, two of the 62 Saturn moons, are a good example of the differences between those moons when they appear together as in this Cassini spacecraft image. Although they are both moons of Saturn, Pandora's small size means that it lacks sufficient gravity to pull itself into a round shape like its larger sibling, Mimas.

Researchers believe that the elongated shape of Pandora, which is still among the 13 Saturn moons larger than 50 kilometers in diameter with its 81 kilometers across, may hold clues to how it and other moons near the rings formed.

This view looks toward the anti-Saturn hemisphere of Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers across). North on Mimas is up and rotated 28 degrees to the right. The image was taken in blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 14, 2013.

Since there are no advanced sensors on Cassini that could detect lifeforms, planet-destroying-lasers or hyperdrives, it cannot be ruled out that this picture shows something different than just a big rock -- the size, shape and orbit correspond to the secret third Death Star that went missing in an interstellar war long ago.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers from Mimas. Image scale is 7 kilometers per pixel. Pandora was at a distance of 1.2 million kilometers when this image was taken. Image scale on Pandora is 0.7 kilometers per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. -- NASA