Ringo Vinda: An oddly tiny planet?

[Lucky]

Ringo Vinda

http://clonewars.wikia.com/wiki/Ringo_Vinda

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2014 ... ovinda.jpg

http://lightsaberrattling.com/battle-me ... sode-6-01/

http://lightsaberrattling.com/wp-conten ... battle.jpg

I'm not very good at scaling, but shouldn't the station that rings the planet look like a hairline by the time it reaches the opposite side of the planet?

[359]

Well going from ye ol' spherical body measurement, the planet, appearing to be made of rock and not ice, should need to be some 600 km in diameter in order to be circular. That, and the plant appears to have an atmosphere so it shouldn't be that small.

On the other hand, however, the ring station is easily scaled to less than a kilometer deep. There is a very good scene later when a shuttle is dropping off Anikin, Rex, and Fives trying to rescue Tup. While the shuttle is landing, one can clearly see the outer depth of the station in comparison to the wingspan of a republic shuttle.

In that frame, the shuttle is approximately 14 px and the depth of the outer side of the Ringo Vinda station is 98 px. And in the image where one can see the entire station from a distance, the outside edge of the ring is about 3 px at the most middle point and the planet is 410 px across. This makes the planet some 956.6667 times wider than the shuttle is tall with full wing extension. Now if the shuttle is similar to the lambda-class it is based on (in artistic design, in universe it is the other way around) and is about 20 m long with a wingtip-to-wingtip height of, say 40 to 50 meters, the planet would be about 47.8333 km across.

Going by the smallest possible rocky spherical diameter estimate, the planet should be no smaller than 600 km. So depending on how one wants to look at it, the planet is either really small, or the station is really huge.

Given the surprise about the Deathstar's size in A New Hope, I think it makes more sense to assume the smaller size for the station and therefor the planet, based on in-universe context.

[Mike DiCenso]

Using the side on view as seen here:



The "planet" is 4.14" in the image and the ring station's depth is .075", which would mean that Ringo Vinda is only some 55.2 times wider than the station is deep, excluding the tiny sliver of atmosphere glow. So the "planet" is only at most 55 km.

The station itself has a diameter of 6.25" in image, or 83.3 times larger than its own depth, which naturally makes it 83.3 km wide.

However, I would need to see good images of the shuttle or other spacecraft landing or in very close proximity to it to verify the 1 km depth.

Well going from ye ol' spherical body measurement, the planet, appearing to be made of rock and not ice, should need to be some 600 km in diameter in order to be circular. That, and the plant appears to have an atmosphere so it shouldn't be that small.

Actually, there are smaller bodies in our real-life Solar System that are far smaller, yet still have a fairly spherical shape. Saturn's moon Mimas is one such body with a diameter of only 415.6 × 393.4 × 381.2 km. Not bad for a moon that is mostly ice and some rock.

So, I suppose if Ringo Vinda were composed of highly dense material, it could hold a spherical or mostly spherical shape under the right circumstances.
-Mike

[Lucky]

This kind of reminds me of scaling Alderaan's size off the Superlaser beam, and the fact you can easily end up with a very tiny planet as well.
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2013 ... an-ANH.png

It make you wonder how small Endor and Yavin 4 could be?

^_^

[Mike DiCenso]

Hard to tell anything from one single frame like that, especially where the white glare from the impact may be washing out the furthest portions of the beam with intense image saturation, and making it look bigger than it really is.
-Mike

[359]

Actually, there are smaller bodies in our real-life Solar System that are far smaller, yet still have a fairly spherical shape. Saturn's moon Mimas is one such body with a diameter of only 415.6 × 393.4 × 381.2 km. Not bad for a moon that is mostly ice and some rock.

Mimas is composed of ice, and yes it is vaguely spherical and smaller. But it is not composed of rock as Ringo Vinda appears to be. Balls of ice have a spherical threshold of about 320 km due to their lower rigidity. Mimas is specifically addressed as it is not quite round, and had a different thermal history than many other ice bodies.

It make you wonder how small Endor and Yavin 4 could be?

They have gravity at least similar to Rarth, so unless one wants to argue that their composition is drastically (further emphasis on the drastically) different they must be similar in size to Earth.

[2046]

Mentioned this in my TCW6 thread… yeah, it's gotta be tiny. The station is very skinny yet visible even at the limb of the "planet". Since we never see the planet surface or anything, the simplest solution is that it is wee. As noted, this fits the surprise about the Death Star.

This is a CGI show… if they wanted to show a real size station like that, they could have.

[Mike DiCenso]

Mimas is composed of ice, and yes it is vaguely spherical and smaller. But it is not composed of rock as Ringo Vinda appears to be. Balls of ice have a spherical threshold of about 320 km due to their lower rigidity. Mimas is specifically addressed as it is not quite round, and had a different thermal history than many other ice bodies.

Uh, the Earth isn't truly perfectly spherical, either. It just deviates very slightly compared to Mimas with a polar radius of 6356.8 km and an equatorial radius of 6378.1 km. But Mimas deviates only at most by 9 percent from any measure, which is pretty good for such a small ice and rock ball, especially since some of the distortion of Mimas' shape comes not simply from the lack of mass and gravity, but also from the tidal interactions with Saturn.

But the real point is that you can get a really rounded planetary body at such a small size, which in turn means that we still have to consider that Ringo Vinda is probably a super-dense little ball of perhaps mostly heavy metals since it does have an atmosphere. Of course, Ringo Vinda may not be very close to it's sun, which may also explain why it still retains an atmosphere, if it is far enough away to not have it blown off by the solar wind.

I also note that while we see some white clouds and an atmosphere, there does not appear to be any oceans of any kind on the planet, which suggests it is barren and perhaps unlivable. So was any indication given as to why there was such a space station there, except for Rule of Cool purposes?
-Mike

[Lucky]

Hard to tell anything from one single frame like that, especially where the white glare from the impact may be washing out the furthest portions of the beam with intense image saturation, and making it look bigger than it really is.
-Mike

Just being lazy, and using the first reasonable screen cap I could find as an example.

[Lucky]

They have gravity at least similar to Rarth, so unless one wants to argue that their composition is drastically (further emphasis on the drastically) different they must be similar in size to Earth.

Well the scripts seem to refer to Yavin 4 and Endor as small and tiny.

http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars- ... -Jedi.html
PAN DOWN to reveal a monstrous half-completed Death Star, its massive superstructure curling away from the completed section like the arms of a giant octopus. Beyond, in benevolent contrast, floats the small, green moon of ENDOR.


http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-A-New-Hope.html
EXT. SPACE AROUND FOURTH MOON OF YAVIN
The battered pirateship drifts into orbit around the planet Yavin and proceeds to one of its tiny green moons.

EXT. FOURTH MOON OF YAVIN
The pirateship soars over the dense jungle.

Would an Earth sized moon be a small or tiny moon?

Yavin is something like the size of Uranus isn't it?

[Mike DiCenso]

Since they are moons and are orbiting another, larger planetary body, then yes, describing them as "tiny" or "small" makes sense. Yavin IV is much smaller compared to Yavin Prime the gas giant, for example.

Its a relative descriptor.

The Earth would be seem to be tiny, if say, it was orbiting Jupiter or Saturn.
-Mike

[Jedi Master Spock]

Remember the asteroid that the Falcon hides on? It's too small to be perfectly spherical. Yet, by all appearances, it has normal gravity and even an atmosphere down in the tunnel.

Funny, huh?

If you go through the episode, there's a part where you can see some known ships flying close along the ring of the station. You can see the curvature of the ring station in a very big way during that segment, and it really doesn't look like it's anywhere near planet-sized. I don't think you could fit that ring around the outside of the first Death Star.

Very weird. I think somebody has no sense of scale.

[2046]

If you go through the episode, there's a part where you can see some known ships flying close along the ring of the station. You can see the curvature of the ring station in a very big way during that segment, and it really doesn't look like it's anywhere near planet-sized. I don't think you could fit that ring around the outside of the first Death Star.

Very weird. I think somebody has no sense of scale.

This is similar to "Jedi Crash", where you have a tiny, tiny star-like object approximately two feet above the atmosphere of a habitable planet. I exaggerate slightly, but seriously, the star-like object is merely several times larger than the Republic ship which is seen to pass behind it. They call it a star, but unless there's something wonky going on, it ain't.

Had the planet from that episode also been presented as tiny or if they frequently showed other planets with ships coming from behind them looking huge then I would have to chalk it up to the method of presentation (artistic license) and just roll with it. But the Jedi Crash planet itself seemed to be planet-sized, and we never see any planets presented that way, nor any other object, for that matter.

Save one, actually . . . the Abregado Object, like the "Jedi Crash" star-like object, was a small luminous body shown in TCW.

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http://www.nolettershome.info/?Season_1:2.__%22Rising_Malevolence%22[TCW1]

So either all stars are tiny in the SW galaxy, or else there are at least two peculiar small luminous star-like objects there.

[Lucky]

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http://www.nolettershome.info/?Season_1:2.__%22Rising_Malevolence%22[TCW1]

So either all stars are tiny in the SW galaxy, or else there are at least two peculiar small luminous star-like objects there.

How did you determine the size of the red star in Rise of the Malevolence? I can't see any way to tell how large it is based on the pictures on your site.

[Mr. Oragahn]

What about the asteroid belt where Anakin hid his walkers in, in season one?

Scales are really screwed up.

That said, I've seen worse. In Stargate they once had a Ha'tak come from behind the moon just like the moon was some kind of tree and the Goa'uld ship was like only a tenth of the satellite's size.
More recently, in The Plan, you see Basestars being partially masked by a planet they supposedly orbit.
That is just so lazy work. Well, anyway, in The Plan, they also had the size of the Cylon Colony wrong, by using an erroneous schematic found on internet.