48 Fun Facts About Star Wars Planets

Canto Bight on the planet Cantonica was filmed in which real city?

Dubrovnik. The crew took over its main street for a week in March 2016 to stage the casino-city chase, in a walled Croatian port that had already played King's Landing in Game of Thrones.

Which dwarf galaxy orbiting the main Star Wars galaxy is named in Attack of the Clones?

The Rishi Maze. Dexter Jettster uses it as a signpost when Obi-Wan asks about a planet missing from the Jedi archives: about twelve parsecs outside the Rishi Maze, he says.

Which planet, famed for its shipyards, is Han Solo's homeworld?

Corellia. Its vast yards turned out both the Millennium Falcon's class of freighter and the Empire's Star Destroyers, and the young Han of Solo grows up an orphan there before fleeing its gangs.

What lies at the centre of the Star Wars galaxy's Deep Core?

A supermassive black hole. The stars around it are packed so densely that the region is dangerous to navigate, so explorers largely left it alone.

Which galactic region contains Naboo?

The Mid Rim. Naboo is one of the outlying systems whose trade-route taxes are in dispute when the Trade Federation blockades and then invades it.

The wreck-strewn desert world where Rey scavenges in The Force Awakens is which planet?

Jakku. Its wrecks are what is left of the Empire's last stand, a battle fought above the planet a year after Endor, and Rey makes her living stripping the fallen warships for parts.

Which planet sacred to the Jedi became Starkiller Base?

Ilum. Jedi younglings once went to its ice caves to find the crystals for their first lightsabers; the First Order later made the same sacred planet into a superweapon that destroys worlds.

On which hidden Sith world does Palpatine build his fleet in The Rise of Skywalker?

Exegol. It appears on no star chart, so the whole film becomes a race for the two Sith wayfinders that can plot a course to it.

NASA says Kepler-22b may be one vast ocean, like which Star Wars planet?

Kamino. NASA can't yet tell whether Kepler-22b is rock, gas or water, but if it is an ocean world it would be a real match for the cloners' storm-lashed home.

In Lucas's early treatment, the story opened on the fourth moon of which planet?

Its hero was a young warrior called Annikin Starkiller; the desert later became Aquilae, then Utapau again.

In which Tatooine city does young Anakin win the Boonta Eve podrace in The Phantom Menace?

Mos Espa. Anakin is a slave there, and Qui-Gon stakes everything on the race: the winnings pay for the part his stranded ship needs, and a side bet wins the boy his freedom.

Matmata's sunken Hotel Sidi Driss played which Star Wars location?

The Lars homestead. The crew dressed the hotel's sunken courtyard as Luke's home in 1976, then came back to the same pit a quarter of a century later to film it again for Attack of the Clones.

What unlikely weather disrupted the first days of filming Tatooine's desert scenes in 1976?

A rare rainstorm. The crew had gone to the edge of the Sahara for a bone-dry planet and met the wettest weather the region had seen in years, on top of droids and props that kept breaking down.

Tatooine takes its name from a town in which country?

Tunisia. George Lucas was still rewriting his script while he scouted the desert there, and he borrowed the name of the southern town of Tataouine for Luke's home planet.

Han Solo boasts that the Millennium Falcon made the run named for which spice-mining planet in under twelve parsecs?

Kessel. A parsec measures distance, not time, and Solo finally explained the boast: Han shortens the route with a dangerous shortcut, and Chewbacca still makes it nearer thirteen.

In whose style did John Williams write the Mos Eisley cantina band's music?

Benny Goodman. George Lucas asked for swing as aliens of a future century might play it after digging up a 1930s record, and on set the masked band mimed to Goodman's 'Sing, Sing, Sing'.

What are the names of Tatooine's two suns?

Tatoo I and Tatoo II. A double sunset was pure fantasy in 1977; in 2011 NASA's Kepler telescope found its first real planet circling two stars at once, Kepler-16b.

In which novel was the Star Wars capital planet first called Coruscant?

Heir to the Empire. Timothy Zahn made the name up for his 1991 bestseller, and George Lucas adopted it for the capital while developing The Phantom Menace.

Where do city-planet Coruscant's wealthiest citizens live?

At the top. Wealth rises with altitude: the city has been built over itself until it is more than five thousand levels deep, and the lowest of them never see daylight.

Coruscant's clone-trooper nickname 'Triple Zero' refers to what?

Its map coordinates. Every chart is drawn with the capital at 0-0-0, even though the planet is not at the galaxy's true centre, and a Republic Commando novel took the nickname as its title.

Coruscant, the Star Wars capital, shares its name with a rare English word meaning what?

Glittering. The word comes from the Latin coruscare, to flash or glitter, and it suits a planet whose surface is one city: in the stories its lights sparkle from space like gems.

On which lava planet does Obi-Wan defeat Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith?

Mustafar. Some of its fire is real: Mount Etna erupted while the film was in production, and a camera crew was sent to Sicily to shoot the lava for the duel's backgrounds.

Which classic film's future city, with traffic streaming between skyscrapers, is thought to have partly inspired Coruscant?

Metropolis. Fritz Lang's 1927 film had already shaped Star Wars once: its robot was the model for C-3PO, long before its lanes of flying cars turned up in the skies of the capital.

Which predator drags Luke to its ice cave in The Empire Strikes Back?

The wampa. The first draft of the script went further and had wampas attacking the Rebel base itself; in the film one lone beast ambushes Luke, who wounds it with his lightsaber to escape.

Hoth's snowfields were filmed on a glacier in which country?

Norway. The shoot near the hamlet of Finse ran into the area's worst snowstorm in fifty years, so many shots were grabbed just outside the crew's hotel, and Harrison Ford reached the set by snowplough.

The snow on the miniature battlefield for the Battle of Hoth included which kitchen staple?

Baking soda. Modelmakers spread it across the tabletop set, and the animators had to twist themselves around the snowfield to nudge each walker forward one frame at a time.

Cloud City, run by Lando Calrissian in The Empire Strikes Back, floats in the skies of which planet?

Bespin. The city earns its living mining gas from the giant planet's clouds, an idea NASA has taken seriously enough to study for Uranus and Neptune.

Where does Rey find the wreck of the second Death Star in The Rise of Skywalker?

Kef Bir. It is a sister moon of the forest moon of Endor, circling the same giant planet, which is why the station destroyed above one came down in the seas of the other.

The forest moon of Endor was filmed in the towering forests of which US state?

California. To keep fans and the press away, the crew shot in the redwoods near Crescent City under a fake title, Blue Harvest.

On which planet does Rey find Luke Skywalker in exile at the end of The Force Awakens?

Ahch-To. Luke had gone looking for the first Jedi temple after his nephew destroyed his new Jedi school, and chose its lonely island as the place to hide.

Which early Star Wars novel, planned as a cheap film sequel, strands Luke and Leia on swampy Mimban?

Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Alan Dean Foster set it on a misty jungle world to keep the sets cheap, and left Han Solo out because Harrison Ford had not signed up for a sequel.

Which creatures were added to The Last Jedi to disguise the real puffins on its island location?

Porgs. The puffins of Skellig Michael are protected and kept wandering into shot, so the effects team painted a new sea bird over each one instead of erasing them.

On the planet Crait in The Last Jedi, what colour shows wherever the white salt crust is broken?

Red. A blood-coloured mineral lies just under the salt, so every speeder ski and footstep in the final battle carves a scarlet trail; the flats themselves are Bolivia's Salar de Uyuni.

Which character in The Mandalorian comes from Alderaan, Princess Leia's destroyed homeworld?

Cara Dune. Moff Gideon exposes her as a former Rebel shock trooper from the planet the Empire blew up, and she later says she lost everything with it.

The snowy peaks behind Alderaan in Revenge of the Sith are real mountains filmed in which country?

Switzerland. The effects team photographed the Alps around Grindelwald and laid a digital city over them for the few seconds in which Bail Organa carries the baby Leia home.

From an Imperial vault on which planet are the Death Star plans stolen in Rogue One?

Scarif. Its palm beaches were filmed in the Maldives, and the base does not outlive the theft: the Death Star is ordered to fire on the Empire's own archive.

Geonosis's landscapes were inspired by which real region?

The American West. Its buttes and mesas came from photographs of the desert Southwest, while the hive spires were modelled on African termite mounds, a fitting home for a planet of insect people.

Which cat-like beast claws Padmé in the Geonosis execution arena in Attack of the Clones?

The nexu. It rakes its claws across her back before she kicks it away; like the reek and the acklay beside it, it was shipped in from another world because the Geonosians make a show of their executions.

Which Separatist leader flees Geonosis with the Death Star plans in Attack of the Clones?

Count Dooku. The insect-like Geonosians designed the station, and the Empire later wiped out almost their whole species to keep it secret; Rebels shows a lone survivor scratching its outline in the dirt.

Which Mayan site stood in for Yavin 4 in A New Hope?

Tikal. George Lucas picked the ruins from a poster in an English travel agent's, and its temples rise out of the jungle in the shot where a Rebel sentry watches the heroes' ship fly in.

Which hero of the newer Star Wars films comes from Yavin 4 because his actor was born where the moon was filmed?

Poe Dameron. Oscar Isaac realised that the Rebel base of 1977 had been filmed in the country of his birth, and asked for his pilot to be given the same home.

Which planet of the Nightsister witches, bathed in crimson light, is the homeworld of Darth Maul?

Dathomir. Its witches dominate a clan of tattooed warriors called the Nightbrothers, and it was among them that the Sith found Maul.

Which forested planet is the Wookiee homeworld?

Kashyyyk. It was first seen in the much-mocked 1978 Holiday Special, and when it finally reached cinemas in Revenge of the Sith the designers went back to that programme for ideas.

Which furry species lives on the forest moon of Endor?

Ewoks. Nobody in the film that introduced them ever says the word: the name appears only in the script and the end credits, and reached audiences through the novel, the toys and the spin-offs.

In which Star Wars film does Yoda die of old age in his hut on Dagobah?

Return of the Jedi. Luke comes back to finish his training and finds his teacher fading; before he dies, Yoda confirms that Vader is Luke's father and that there is another Skywalker.

What is the Rebel base dug into Hoth's ice called?

Echo Base. The Rebels widened natural ice caves to make it, and had barely moved in when an Imperial probe droid found the place and forced them to abandon it.

Which bounty hunter delivers the frozen Han Solo to Jabba the Hutt's palace on Tatooine?

Boba Fett. He collects the bounty Jabba had put on Han's head; decades later The Book of Boba Fett had him take over the dead Hutt's territory as Tatooine's new crime lord.

On whose orders is Alderaan destroyed by the Death Star?

Grand Moff Tarkin. He promises to spare Leia's home planet if she names the Rebel base, and when she gives him a name he fires anyway, to make an example of it.