Moon

The movie Moon was kick ass and if you haven't seen it yet you should see that ASAP. The movie Moon is not what this post is about though, this post is about kick ass moons floating around in our solar system.

Iapetus

"Even a cursory glance at Saturn's moon Iapetus reveals it to be an oddball. It is two-toned - one half is black, the other shining white - and strangely shaped, flattened at the poles and squashed at the sides as well. A ridge runs halfway around its equator, giving it the appearance of a walnut shell." read more








So basically when the sun hits Iapetus it melts all the snow and ice on that side of the moon. The water vapor then blows around to the dark side and forms frost giving it the white sheen it has. It's about as close as we can find in our solar system to planet Hoth.

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The Moon

"The moon's bulky dimensions may be a reflection of its unique origin. Moons are generally thought to form in one of two ways - either by coalescing from the same cloud of debris as their parent planet, or as wandering objects captured by the parent's gravitational pull. Our moon had a more bloody birth, when a large protoplanet collided with the young Earth 4.5 billion years ago and cast out a glowing ring of melted and vaporized rock, some of which condensed to form our satellite. That ancient cataclysm might have been lucky for us, as the moon helps to stabilize the axial tilt of Earth, removing one source of extreme climate change that might otherwise have afflicted our planet." read more

The moon gets a few bonus points for being our moon which is cool because you can see it without a telescope at night and sometimes during the day. We have sent people to walk on it and someday we may even have scientific laboratories on the moon. Just imagine the wonderful pictures a telescope on the dark side of the moon would capture. The Moon however loses a point for resembling Folor. Folor is a moon from the Star Wars video game X-Wing which is pretty cool but because it wasn't in the original trilogy I have to deduct one point. It also loses a point because of funding cuts to Nasa which means that at least in the immediate future we will not be returning to the moon. :'-(

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Io

"Pockmarked with sulphurous pits, bathed in intense radiation and shaken by constant volcanic eruptions, Io is the fiery hell of the solar system.

Despite being cold enough to be covered in layers of sulphur dioxide frost, this large inner moon of Jupiter is the most volcanic world known, spitting out 100 times as much lava as all Earth's volcanoes can muster, from a surface area just 1/12th the size. Io's surface is dotted with bubbling lakes of molten rock, the largest of which, Loki Patera, is more than 200 kilometres across." read more

Io can be found orbiting the planet Jupiter and sounds like our own version of Mustafar. This would have been a five star moon had Mustafar shown up in the original Star Wars movies.

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Pan and Atlas

"Most moons are either round and smooth, or lumpy pieces of space rock. Saturn's Pan and Atlas, on the other hand, come straight from the set of a 1950s B-movie. With a central bulge set inside a disc-like ridge, they bear an uncanny resemblance to your stereotypical flying saucers." read more







Although Pan and Atlas resemble flying saucers they lose points in the kick ass ratings for not being anything like a planet from Star Wars and being kind of boring. They do get a boost in the kick ass ratings for possibly being an alien mother ship waiting to attach Earth.

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Titan

"It is perhaps the strangest of all moons because it is so eerily familiar. The newly revealed face of Titan has the same weather-beaten features as Earth: lakes, hills and caves; branching river valleys; muddy plains and desert dunes. The thick nitrogen atmosphere holds fog, mist, smoggy haze and rain clouds. As one scientist commented when the first images came back from the Huygens probe in 2005, it looks just like England." read more




I'll be the first to admit that Titan should get a kick ass rating of five stars. In fact when I wrote up this blog last week it had five stars. This whole paragraph was about how cool the moon was and how it was like so many planets from Star Wars and it got bonus points for being like Earth as well. Then I found out about the next moon and sadly Titan had to take a hit in the kick ass ratings.

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Mimas

"The highest-resolution-yet temperature map and images of Saturn’s icy moon Mimas obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft reveal surprising patterns on the surface of the small moon, including unexpected hot regions that resemble “Pac-Man” eating a dot, and striking bands of light and dark in crater walls." read more


OK so right out of the gate Mimas would get a kick ass rating of five stars just for looking like the Death Star. Add to that the fact that it has temperature pasterns that resemble Pac-Man and this moon gets the lock on most kick ass moon. I mean really how much cooler can it get than this?

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I want to thank Mike for the link that prompted this post and if you are interested you can read more about weird worlds on the New Scientist website.