The iconic Pac Man is noted to be one of the most popular classic games. It first caught the fancy of gamers back in 1980 when it first hit the scene. Although it’s been a long time since, we keep on seeing the little yellow critter creeping up in many forms. For one, back in December there was a Retro Pac Man watch espied complete with Pac Man characters.
It now appears that the little yellow game character has torn right out of the traditional arcade game and onto Saturn’s Moon. The highest-resolution-yet temperature maps and images disclosed by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft apparently shows a Pac Man pattern eating a dot embedded on the surface Saturn’s icy moon Mimas. The Pac Man appearance is chalked out by a combination of unforeseen hot regions along with striking bands of light and dark in crater walls.
“Other moons usually grab the spotlight, but it turns out Mimas is more bizarre than we thought it was. It has certainly given us some new puzzles,” stated Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Saturn’s Moon Mimas bears a striking resemblance to the Death Star from ‘Star Wars’ and also features a huge scar known as Herschel Crater. The scientists observed the warmest region was in the morning itself as it ran along one edge of the moon’s surface. With temperatures around minus 294 degrees Fahrenheit, they could fathom a sharply defined Pac-Man shape on Mimas whereas the rest of the planet was much colder. Near the mouth of the Pac Man shape, a smaller warm spot was noticed around Herschel. Here the temperature was around minus 310 degrees Fahrenheit.
John Spencer, a Cassini composite infrared spectrometer team member based at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. revealed, “We suspect the temperatures are revealing differences in texture on the surface. It’s maybe something like the difference between old, dense snow and freshly fallen powder.”
According to the scientists at NASA, the warm spot around Herschel is understandable but were very perplexed with the sharp, V-shaped pattern. This data was gathered on February 13, 2010. The new revelation makes Pac-Man an icon that is truly ‘out of this world’.