Iapetus is a moon of Saturn that looks somewhat like the infamous Death Star in the "Star Wars" franchise, with a large crater that resembles the fictional weapon's superlaser focus lens. The Death Star is a planet-killing machine that destroys entire worlds with its outrageously powerful laser. It was prominently featured in the 2016 movie "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story," as well as in 1977's "Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope." A Daily Mail article published in May 2016 claimed Iapetus is an artificial object crafted by aliens. As "evidence," the article cited a photo taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2004. In the photo, there's a line around the moon's equator that resembles the equatorial trench around the Death Star. But this line isn't nearly as interesting as the Death Star's trench, which houses the battle station's engines, thrusters and docking bays. That line is nothing more than a mountain ridge, and Iapetus is actually just made up of boring old rock and ice. Cassini has flown by the moon to take pictures several times without being blasted by deadly alien lasers. Iapetus has a low density of only 1.083 grams per cubic centimeter, just a little more than liquid water, implying that it composed primarily of water, with rock making up less than a quarter of its composition. The walnut-shaped moon is not spherical, but has a bulging equator with squashed poles. The squashed shape of the moon resembles a satellite that rotates once every 10 hours, rather than the 79 days it takes Iapetus to make a full revolution. n 2012, scientists announced they had detected landslides of up to 50 miles. These were likely generated when material fell from a great height and travelled a long way in the light gravity of the moon.
The image from a black-and-white from NASA's Cassini mission shows a polar projection of the curious six-sided jet stream at Saturn's north pole known as "the hexagon" in the infrared. Saturn's hexagon was first spotted when NASA's Voyager spacecraft flew by the giant, ringed planet in 1980. The bizarre, six-sided structure on the round planet's north pole caused quite the stir, because straight lines and polygons are not so common in nature. the Voyager returned its first images of Saturn's strange feature, even stranger theories arose to explain it, including that it was somehow related to alien technology, or perhaps even was a gateway to hell. The hexagon is not artificial, but rather a weird-looking hurricane at Saturn's pole.