Q 01/05

Saturn's moon Mimas, scarred by one enormous crater, resembles which science-fiction space station?

A) Deep Space Nine

B) The Death Star

C) Babylon 5

D) Starkiller Base

Answer · why

B) The Death Star

The Death Star likeness comes from a crater about a third as wide as Mimas itself, on the smallest known body pulled round by its own gravity.

Q 02/05

Cassini's heat maps of Saturn's moon Tethys show a pattern shaped like which arcade game character?

A) Donkey Kong

B) Q*bert

C) Pac-Man

D) Frogger

Answer · why

C) Pac-Man

Pac-Man shows up in infrared because one stretch of Tethys's surface stays cooler at midday than the ground around it.

Q 03/05

In Marvel Comics, which warlord nicknamed the Mad Titan was born on Saturn's largest moon?

A) Galactus

B) Ronan

C) Annihilus

D) Thanos

Answer · why

D) Thanos

Thanos hails from Titan, and his name echoes Thanatos, a label for Freud's idea of a human drive toward destruction, which creator Jim Starlin met in ...

Q 04/05

Mountains on Saturn's moon Titan are named after peaks from which author's fictional world?

A) J. R. R. Tolkien

B) C. S. Lewis

C) George R. R. Martin

D) Ursula K. Le Guin

Answer · why

A) J. R. R. Tolkien

J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth gives Titan a Doom Mons and an Erebor Mons, under a naming rule that borrows only fictional mountains.

Q 05/05

Saturn's moon Titan is so large that it is wider than which planet of the solar system?

A) Mercury

B) Mars

C) Venus

D) Neptune

Answer · why

A) Mercury

Mercury is about 6% narrower than Titan yet more than twice as massive, because it is iron and rock while Titan is mostly ice.