10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Death Star
That's no moon!
The DS-1 Orbital Battle Station, known to a terrified and awestruck galaxy as the Death Star, is a moon-sized plot device so awesome it's been the centrepiece of three Star Wars movies and has entered the English language as a synonym for anything huge, impervious and devastating.
Part of its appeal is that it's not just a big honkin' space gun - it's also a setting for drama, intrigue and climactic lightsaber fights, and a symbol of the Empire's power and ruthlessness.
The Death Star can be read as a symbol not only of the Empire's strength, but of its weakness. It's a vastly expensive, resource-intensive folly, an extension of the Emperor Palpatine's titanically malevolent ego. And by sinking the whole secret weapon budget into a single planet-cracking battle station, the Empire put all that investment at the mercy of the a band of teenagers and their magic ghost dad.
Whether it's a weapon that could end the Galactic Civil War at a stroke, or a catastrophic failure that sealed the Empire's doom, the Death Star continues to exert its grim influence over the world's imagination.
10. The Trench Was An Accident
Unlike many elements of Star Wars' distinctive visuals, the Death Star's look was pretty much decided from the start. It was always a spherical doom engine the size of a moon, with a massive sunken laser pit. One of its more distinctive features, however, was accidental.
While making the initial models of the Death Star, modelmaker Colin Cantwell created the sphere in two halves. When he came to assemble them he realised the two halves had shrunk slightly, creating a noticeable gap around the equator. Geogre Lucas liked the look of this and kept the equatorial trench that helped define the look of the battle station.
Bonus fact: The equatorial trench isn't the one that Luke flies down on his way to his fateful liaison with a 2-metre exhaust port. That one is canonically near the Death Star's north pole. The equatorial trench is much bigger and is used to house the entrances to the Death Star's spaceship hangars, including the one the Millennium Falcon is kept in.