10 Things You Probably Didn't Know About The Death Star

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.