One of Saturn’s Moon Got Itself A Face Only Momma Loves.
Enlarge. | Via.
Check out the flat face of one of Saturn’s moons, Mimas. Son of a bitch (or daughter of a bitch?) got itself rocked some time ago by a vicious space-object and it’s had to suffer the malformation ever since.
How big is that impact? Enormous.
Bad Astronomy:
A long time ago, Mimas got hit pretty hard with something pretty big. The apocalyptic impact carved a crater 130 km (80 miles) across in the moon, which we now call Herschel. In most pictures we see it from an angle and Mimas winds up looking an awful lot like the Death Star.
But in the big picture above the crater was almost edge-on, and you can see how seriously it messed up the moon: a pretty hefty portion of the edge of Mimas looks flat where the rim of the crater distorts the horizon. An impact this size anywhere on Earth would be, well, bad. Very very very bad.
Mimas, picked last in gym and dying a virgin with a face like that. I can suddenly relate to one of Saturn’s moons.