Post #349

MayThe 4th, swipe through a special tour of the solar system to witness real worlds that share a striking resemblance to fictional ones found in a galaxy far, far away. Hoth—home to the iconic windswept tundra disturbed by Imperial AT-AT walkers in “The Empire Strikes Back,” Hoth is much like Pluto. The dwarf planet on the far end of our solar system can reach temperatures as low as -375° F (-240° C) cold enough to worry even a tauntaun. In fact, Pluto's surface is dominated by mountains, valleys, plains, and craters of frozen water and gases like methane. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute/Alex Parker Mustafar—the volcanic world first seen in “Revenge of the Sith” shares a resemblance to Venus, the second planet from the Sun. The planet's thick atmosphere hides a surface covered with lava flows, quake faults, and impact craters. One lava-filled basin is larger than the continental U.S., and one volcano is taller than Mt.