On this day in space! Sept. 17, 1789: Saturn's 'Death Star' moon discovered

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On Sept. 17, 1789, the British astronomer William Herschel discovered Saturn's "Death Star" moon, Mimas.

On Sept. 17, 1789, the British astronomer William Herschel discovered Saturn's "Death Star" moon, Mimas.

Meet Mimas: Saturn's Death Star Moon

Of course, "Star Wars" wasn't a thing at the time, and no one had ever heard of something called a "Death Star." But there's no denying that this moon looks just like it.

An illustration of Saturn's moon, Mimas, which looks like the Death Star (Image credit: Frédéric Durillon, Animea Studio | Observatoire de Paris – PSL, IMCCE)

Anyway, Herschel was a guy who liked to build telescopes and discover things, like the planet Uranus, tiny moons around Jupiter and Saturn, and other stuff out there in space. Shortly after he invented a huge new kind of reflecting telescope called the Herschelian telescope, he spotted Mimas orbiting Saturn.

Mimas is super tiny with a diameter of less than 250 miles. It is the smallest known spherical body in space that is held together by self-gravitation.

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Hanneke Weitering
Hanneke Weitering
Contributing expert

Hanneke Weitering is a multimedia journalist in the Pacific Northwest reporting on the future of aviation at FutureFlight.aero and Aviation International News and was previously the Editor for Spaceflight and Astronomy news here at Space.com. As an editor with over 10 years of experience in science journalism she has previously written for Scholastic Classroom Magazines, MedPage Today and The Joint Institute for Computational Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. After studying physics at the University of Tennessee in her hometown of Knoxville, she earned her graduate degree in Science, Health and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University. Hanneke joined the Space.com team in 2016 as a staff writer and producer, covering topics including spaceflight and astronomy. She currently lives in Seattle, home of the Space Needle, with her cat and two snakes. In her spare time, Hanneke enjoys exploring the Rocky Mountains, basking in nature and looking for dark skies to gaze at the cosmos. 

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