Pixel Gun Dead Star

[Latanya Hariri]

The Death Star was the Empire'sarmored battle station, nearly twice as big as its predecessor, which Rebelforces had destroyed so many years beforenearly twice as big, but more thantwice as powerful. Yet it was only half complete."

In and of itself, this tells uslittle. For instance, I could say that the Galaxy Class Enterprise-D, witha length of 642 meters, was over twice as big as the Constitution ClassEnterprise-A, with a length of 305 meters. Alternately, I could say thatthe Enterprise-D, with a volume of over 5.8million cubic meters, is almost 25 times bigger than the Enterprise-A, whichonly has a volume of less than a quarter-million cubic meters.

Curtis Saxton has used the zoom-in on the polar trench from the Dodonnabriefing screen schematics in ANH to derivea value of 93 - 169 kilometers for the first Death Star, though he does not givedetails on the methodology employed. His other canon-based scalingeffort regarding the DS1 involves a lower limit of 125 kilometers, based on therelative polar trench length on the Dodonna briefing screen, with the assumptionthat the fighter computers were showing distance in meters. However,the briefing schematic was rather dissimilar to the actual Death Star: the mosteggregious error gives us the superlaser dish centered on the equator. Further, theassumption that the Rebel fighter indicators showed a range in meters does nothold . . . the fighters would've had to have been travelling at better than 2.5kilometers per second, which is flatly contradicted by the exterior visuals.

Lacking methodology and falseassumptions aside, however, those efforts with the canon make a fair startingpoint. The alternative would be to use the lesser-canon AoTC novelization statement that the DeathStar is a "planet-sized" battlestation, which is ludicrous even byeyeball estimates of the film material.

The farthest section of thenearest left-side bay . . . in other words, the bay wall closest to thecolumn . . . measures 20 pixels. The nearest section ofthe farthest left-side bay measures 18 pixels. Assuming that 17.55 metersequals 19 pixels, then the height of the column between the twobays, measuring 497 pixels, is 459.1 meters. Since the submerged dock area is apparentlyrectangular, this means that the outermost section of the submerged area isabout 460 meters tall.

If you look to the left and below the Falcon, you can also see (circled)what seems to be another submergeddock area further along the trench, which appears to be the same height as thecloser one. It is marked by the yellow ellipse. At that dock area's closest point, it measures 191 pixels inheight. The large column extending above and below the dock area (split intwo by that area) measures 512 pixels in height, giving a value of1,230.6 meters for the entire height of the column. Judging by the lack ofany other visible features, that value holds for the entire trench.

The trench is receiving some direct lighting of the interior in this shot, which could complicate scaling a bit. However, we can see on the left-most side that the trench is at least 7 pixels in height. The Death Star itself is 660 pixels in height. Thus the entire Death Star, here some 660 pixels tall, is thus 116,027.9 meters tall in this image . . . or 116 kilometers.

Checking against the DVD version of the image above and past literature, we find that this is not simply an artifact of the HD broadcast available in North America. 715 divided by 660 gives us an 8.33% greater width.

In the shot above from the DVD, measurement brings us a difference of about 7.2%, which is very close. A reprint of a shot of the Death Star model that Saxton provides in comments on Revenge of the Sith is very near this value, at 7.67%.

Happily this issue is largely irrelevant up until this point, since we've exclusively been measuring height, and not mixing measurements of height and width. The one exception was from the first image wherein we measured the Falcon's width, but that image came from the DVD anyway.

Assuming the DVD to be preferred for the purpose of finding the Death Star's width, then using the percentage increase in width from the DVD for the DS wide shot we would want to adjust the Death Star width to 124.4 kilometers.

Second, the measurement above involves us being forced to measure a small number of pixels at one point, as we measure the trench versus the entire Death Star. With only seven pixels for the trench, a difference of even one pixel can produce vastly different results. For instance, had we measured six pixels for the trench (forcing each pixel to cover over 200 meters of height), then the height of the Death Star would've come out to (1230.6/6)*660, or 135 kilometers.

The best thing available for use would be the brighter band that runs along the trench. While it is not perfectly invariable in its height, choosing the same location (if possible) can mitigate this to near-zero. For instance, let's take the shot of the Falcon being tractored in from the DVD:

As you can see, I've rotated the frame so that the area beneath the superlaser is approximately level. Why pick the spot below the superlaser, and not a closer location where we would have more pixels? The reason is quite simple, really. If you look at the white longitudinal (i.e. up & down) bands on the southern hemisphere of the Death Star, you'll note they are reversed in the image above compared to the wide shot. Thus it's safer to go directly below the superlaser rather than risk additional problems.

So, beneath the superlaser we have a brighter latitudinal "waistband" of 129 pixels height, compared to a trench height along the same line of 16 pixels. 16 isn't great, but it's still much better than 7. With these measurements, the band comes out to 9,921.7 meters.

In the wide shot, then, we have a band height of 52 pixels compared to 660 for the Death Star's height. This gives us a total height of 125,929.3 meters, or 125.9 kilometers. The Death Star width, using the DVD difference, would be 135 kilometers.

Splitting the difference between the two different methods to get the final height (which gave us 116 and 126 kilometers, respectively), we can estimate the Death Star to be some 120 kilometers in height, and 130 kilometers in width.

(The120km figure, pleasantly enough, is the commonly accepted value, and fits within the scaling efforts of Saxton that were canon-based. Also, not incidentally, that makes the superlaserdish about 36.25 kilometers in diameter.)

A second Death Star of "nearlytwice" that size would be either (a) somewhat smaller than 240-260 kilometers indiameter, based on a near-doubling of the diameter, or (b) up to nearly 160kilometers in diameter, based on a near-doubling of the volume. Given the specific reference to the second Death Star'sincompleteness, there would be a bit of a fudge factor involved . . . in otherwords, DS2 could perhaps be somewhat larger than 250 or 160 kilometers and be withinthe bounds of reason.

Curtis Saxton has made use of canonand non-canon images and estimates of the size of the Imperial shuttle, using itto scale DS2 in a manner similar to the DS1 Falcon scaling above. Hearrived at a value of 270 kilometers for the station diameter (which, in theoriginal version of this page, I accepted and employed). Such avalue would fall roughly within the diameter-doubling option. However,fellow EU author and Star Wars researcher Gary M. Sarli has claimed a fatal flawin Saxton's work, one based on a confusion of the docking bays of the secondDeath Star. His scaling efforts place the second Death Star in theneighborhood of 160 kilometers, or nicely in line with the volume-doublingoption.

As noted, it's possible to derive DS2scaling based on the Imperial shuttle, with a method akin to the one usedearlier with the Falcon. What is first needed, however, is data onthe shuttle. Both Saxton and Sarli use a width figure for the Imperialshuttle (in landed configuration) of 12.56 meters, a figure obtained fromEU blueprints. However, it is always best to work from the films themselves, so let's double-check that figure.

The shot below (which, incidentally,is one of my favorites and which I've been waiting to use in anything forages) shows Darth Vader, identified in the first chapter of the ANH novelizationas being two meters tall, just stepping off of the ramp of his shuttle inRoTJ. His height is approximately 54 pixels in this view, with theshuttle's main hull/lower deck also being 54 pixels tall at the closest edge onthe right side. This suggests that the wide section of the main hull(i.e. the one with the wing hinges) is two meters tall.

Thus, in the wider-angle shot below ofVader's arrival at the beginning of RoTJ (which is a more perspective-free frontview), the main hull's 19 pixels of height and 115px width give us a main hullwidth of 12.1 meters, comfortably inside the 12.5 meter value of the totalshuttle (including the raised wings that jut out ever so slightly) that Saxton and Sarli employ.

Upon Vader's arrival at the secondDeath Star, his shuttle approaches and lands at one of the docking bays seenbelow. Thanks to the pattern of the DS2's incompleteness, we canalso say with certainty that the later landing of the Emperor and the escape ofLuke at the end of the film also involve these "VIP bays".

Vader's approach is photographically well-documented,and shows unquestionably that he lands in the smallest visible bay above, whichcan be seen justoff of the upper right corner of the largest visible bay. The interior ofthat bay is seen below, at the end of Vader's arrival sequence:

The shuttle has quite clearly crossedinto the bay aperture, and, depending on its precise height from the floor,appears to have its fore-aft centerline over the glowing threshold. The shuttle main hull width in the image is 40 pixels, the total shuttle 44pixels, with the entire aperture measuring 244 pixels at the inner rim at aheight similar to that of the shuttle's. Given estimates of a 12.1meter main hull and a 12.5 meter wide shuttle, this means that the aperture isroughly 69.3 - 73.8 meters wide, and the reflection would appear to suggest abay height on the order of 35-45 meters.

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