There's always a twinkle in a science writer's eye when real life imitates art.
In 2005 we had a snapshot of gases and dust around a star that seemed to be auditioning for the next Lord of the Rings film.
Then in 2007 there came the news that the universe could be packed with double-sunned planets like Star Wars' Tatooine.
Earlier this year a Mars orbiter sent in high-resolution shots of a body called Phobos, highlighting its massive Stickney Crater and its uncanny resemblance to the Empire's ultimate weapon.
With apologies to Sir Alec Guinness, this time that is a moon—Phobos is the larger of the two known natural satellites orbiting Mars.
—Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona
Although it was discovered way back in 1877, Phobos has remained fairly enigmatic.
In the late 1950s, its odd orbit inspired Russian astronomers to suggest that the moon is a hollow shell, and an artificial one at that.
It took almost a decade to silence that offbeat theory, based on better calculations of the moon's orbit combined with new density measurements and eventually images from the Viking mission.
But Phobos still boasts some unusual characteristics, prompting much speculation about what the moon is made of and how it took up residence around Mars.
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