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We know the size of the Death Star (2nd one) to be 160 km in diameter, and the length of the Executor Super Star Destroyer to be 19 km. In ROTJ we see the Executor smash into the Death Star, [image in this post][1].

This is obviously way off scale.

What should this scene actually look like? Has anyone seen a scale-corrected version of this scene?

Himarm
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Stewbob
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    added the actual picture replacing the link, since your whole question is based off the picture. :D – Himarm Mar 03 '15 at 16:44
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    it is interesting they chose to show it at the wrong scale here. the point of what's happening in this Act is that the empire is gonna loose. if the correct scale was shown, it would have emphasized the damage more... // more likely it was just an unimportant detail to them – zipquincy Mar 03 '15 at 16:57
  • @zipquincy More likely they just didn't want to bother with using a curved surface. Afterall this whole Death Star surface looks like a flat plane without any perceivable surface structure at all in this picture. That's probably just way easier to do, I guess. – TARS Mar 03 '15 at 17:09
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    they didnt want to break their actual death star. – Himarm Mar 03 '15 at 17:50
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    The surface of the Death Star was a flat model which is why it appears to be flat (and out of scale). At the time, computer animation wasn't quite able to make a realistic surface to crash the Executor into. Here is a picture that shows one of the (huge) models they had to build. http://www.screenused.com/images/starwars/STAR_WARS_BONUS_DISC-7.jpg Note: this may not be the actual Death Star model, but it was very similar. – Jason Hutchinson Mar 03 '15 at 18:00
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    Where did the 19km figure come from, though? I'd argue that the movie is the more canonical source, so it is whoever decided that Executors are 19km long that made the mistake. – Harry Johnston Mar 03 '15 at 19:16
  • oh lord, not another edit for Lucas to make – Justin C Mar 03 '15 at 21:26
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    This question is no doubt inspired by the commentary at http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/82759/21871 , q.v.. ☺ – JdeBP Mar 03 '15 at 21:36
  • Duh, this is all the correct scale and just lens distortion from a sithn hand shops crappy webcam. – PlasmaHH Mar 04 '15 at 09:40
  • On which grounds are you saying it's way off scale? Maybe, that's the answer. – user931 Mar 04 '15 at 14:24
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    @HarryJohnston The 19km figure comes from comparing the ILM models (both on screen and off) of the Executor and the other star destroyers. Which is why the 160km figure of DS2 is ridiculous (and it's inconsistent with the ILM's spec docs for DS2 as well). – Nick2253 Mar 04 '15 at 16:09
  • @Nick2253: off-screen doesn't count, IMO. As for on-screen, I'd have to see specific screenshots to decide whether they were convincing or not. It seems unlikely; for example, how do you know that (in-Universe) there aren't two types of spaceship that look the same except that one is bigger than the other? – Harry Johnston Mar 04 '15 at 21:10
  • @HarryJohnston If you don't count off-screen sources, then there's nothing to refute your statement about multiple, different sized but otherwise identical looking ships. The 160km figure for the Death Star is completely from off screen sources. You can trace screen-shots from human to Tantive IV escape pod, to Devastator bay, to Devastator, (extrapolate to generic Star Destroyer) to Executor to get the 19km size. Given that, we know a lower bound on the DS2 diameter, from the movies alone, must be about 450,000x human size (about 900km) – Nick2253 Mar 04 '15 at 21:16
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    A different question is "given the above picture, how big is the death star"? – Yakk Mar 04 '15 at 21:43
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    @Yakk, I've done the math on that. Depending on measuring error, it's either 22,600km in diameter, based on a perceived 1 pixel curvature, (twice as big as earth) or infinite. Infinite is the proper answer since this scene was shot using a flat model for the death star and any curvature is an artifact of image resizing or lens imperfections. – Stewbob Mar 04 '15 at 21:46
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    Hmmm... follow-up question: How does the 160km number for DS2 hold up when looking at the pictures of DS2 orbiting Endor (e.g. during the Rebel briefing)? Are there canonical numbers for the size of Endor? – DevSolar Mar 05 '15 at 12:18
  • my sources suggest that the first death star had a radius of 160km (diameter = 320km) and the second death star was arguably bigger. the latest suggestion is 400km diameter (radius 200km) but long time it was told that it had 900km radius. but you are right: even with 900km that picture is off scale – iRaS Oct 16 '23 at 13:14

3 Answers3

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Darth Satan got it first and deserves the credit, but I couldn't resist doing this in Photoshop:

enter image description here

I took the picture in the question, found a frame from before it where the Executor hasn't hit the station yet so I could see how long the nose is, did a proportional resizing because the resolutions weren't the same, overlaid the full Executor on the crash frame so I could see the full size from stem to stern, measured that in pixels, adjusted it up for the rotatation of the angle of the ship against the pixel grid, to get:

250px Executor = 19km

Then I got a fairly large full Death Star II image and scaled it up proportionally:

DS2 = 160km

250/19 = x/160

x = 160 x 250 / 19 = 2105px

Then I rotated it 90 degrees to get the angle of crash more correct than it would be coming into the top of the Death Star (since during the battle, the main laser was aimed at the fleet battle. Also if it hit the top, it would have landed right next to where Luke, Vader, and the Emperor were, so they would have got quite a view and quite a shake.). Then I touched up the mixing of the images, such as fixing the black line between the explosion and the ship.

Dronz
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    If obi wan shuddered when the alderon blew up a jillion light years away, why didn't a room full jedis on the death star flinch when all these people died? – Darth Egregious Mar 03 '15 at 19:38
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    @user973810 Allderan was peaceful. The dark side doesn't care. And Luke has bigger things on his mind at that moment. – Zibbobz Mar 03 '15 at 19:57
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    @Zibbobz nah. The alderon thing literally knocked kenobi on his ass and he was nowhere nearby. You're just making wild rationalizations. But that's 90% of the purpose of this site. – Darth Egregious Mar 03 '15 at 20:15
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    @user973810 Might be good to ask that as a question on the site. I'm not sure why it's a comment to this answer to this question about the scale of things. – Dronz Mar 03 '15 at 20:19
  • I got it first but yours is better. –  Mar 03 '15 at 23:18
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    @Dronz, Despite the truly awesome nature of Darth Satan's special effects skills, you get the accept for extra effort on the image. :) – Stewbob Mar 04 '15 at 15:39
  • Hmmm, if I wasn't so lazy I would script up an animated svg showing the Executor actually flying into the Death Star. Good thing I'm lazy :) – bitmask Mar 04 '15 at 15:40
  • There's bound to be an opportunity for a comedy pie chart to answer this. – EleventhDoctor Mar 04 '15 at 15:57
  • I have to say, the correctly scaled version makes the Death Star II look smaller and less daunting. – jamesdlin Mar 04 '15 at 22:34
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    @jamesdlin Or alternatively, it makes the Executor seem huge and far more intimidating. – jpmc26 Mar 05 '15 at 01:07
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    @jpmc26 I know that's what I'm supposed to think, but somehow that's just not my first impression when I look at it. =/ – jamesdlin Mar 05 '15 at 01:16
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    The problem is that the shot made the Executor seem tiny, and it exploded in a little blip. If the Executor were shown to scale to the perspective of that shot, it would be horrifyingly large. – krs013 Mar 05 '15 at 04:12
  • Ya, before I rotated the Death Star II 90 degrees, it would have landed outside Palpatine's office, which would have made quite an impression. I think it could be a very impressive scene if it were zoomed it a lot. – Dronz Mar 05 '15 at 07:42
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To scale it would have looked something like this:

enter image description here

Source: I drew a 160 pixel diameter circle and a 19 pixel long triangle in a paint program, then scaled them up 2x.

DVK-on-Ahch-To
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Here is an article which has sizes for both Death Stars.

There is some uncertainty on whether the Second Death Star was 160km wide or up to 900km.

Cannon purists seem to favor the larger size!

http://www.moseisleyspaceport.org/how-big-is-the-death-star/

Matt Zed
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    Can you add the relevant sections of that linked article to your answer? The trouble with links is that they sometimes go out of data, and your answer becomes kind of useless if that ever happens. Having all the necessary information here mitigates that problem – Jason Baker Nov 03 '15 at 16:58