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In-Depth Information
One other point about Arrakis deserves planetological
discussion. It lacks a global magnetic field. The Fremen use
local magnetic anomalies sensed with a 'paracompass' for
short-range navigation—this may have been inspired by
Bagnold's use of a suncompass for direction-finding on the
move, since using a magnetic compass would require his
Long-Range Desert Group patrols to stop and walk away
from the perturbing fields of their steel trucks.
The exterior shots of the 1984 film adaptation of the story
were shot in the Samalayuca desert, near Ciudad Juarez in
northern Mexico. Actor Patrick Stewart alledgedly com-
plained that the stillsuit was the most uncomfortable cos-
tume he had ever worn. Later in the production process,
some additional outdoor fight-scene shots were needed:
shots were made on sand against a 'blue screen' background
outside the Churubusco film studio in Mexico City so that
artificial painted backgrounds could be applied in post-pro-
duction. In a remote-sensing connection, the red and infrared
content of sunlight in these pre-digital-filming days was
problematic, and specially-formulated blue paint had to be
brought in from the US to make this screen spectrally pure.
Fig. 24.1 The Nile delta appears very prominently in this Hasselblad
hand-held image taken from Gemini IV in 1965. (This was one of the
first spaceborne pictures of dunes (see also Fig. 18.4 ): note the edges
of the frame in this pre-digital-camera image.) The dark areas at lower
left are the Birket Qarun lake and agricultural areas around Faiyum.
The Mediterranean is just visible at top left. Bright linear dunes appear
at mid-lower left, the two easternmost ones being the site of radar and
other field studies (see Figs. 6.21 and 16.12 ) . Saint-Exupéry crashed
about a dune-length away from these. Photo NASA
24.2
Tatooine
The 'Star Wars' movie released in 1977 (and indeed the
series) was a landmark in film-making, with many innova-
tions in plot and style as well as in technical special effects.
Movie locations include deserts as well as snow-covered
and forested worlds. The movies justifiably enjoy cult sta-
tus, and fan websites exist devoted to enabling fans to visit
the sites at which scenes were filmed.
While most of the filming of the original 'Star Wars'
movie (i.e., Episode 4) was done in Tunisia as we discuss
later, it was realized after the Africa filming campaign in
1977 that some additional desert shots were required. These
(where R2D2 and C3PO are wandering among dunes before
encountering sand people) were made at the Stovepipe
Dunes in Death Valley National Park in California, a few
hours' drive from Hollywood (Fig. 24.2 ). In addition, an
opening desert scene in the sequel 'Return of the Jedi' fea-
tures the heroes' escape from crime boss Jabba the Hutt's
sand-yacht. This scene was also filmed at a location inex-
pensively convenient for Hollywood, namely the Imperial
Dunes at Yuma, Arizona (aka Algodones, Fig. 24.3 ).
The iconic desert scenes of planet Tatooine from the first
movie, 'Episode IV, A New Hope', were shot in various
locations in Tunisia, and Tatooine takes its name from the
remote southern town whose Arabic name is usually
transliterated as Tataouine. Many of the exotic-looking
buildings are merely the local Berber style of adobe con-
struction, such as the fortified granaries like Ksar Ouled
Soltane. Curiously, on the first day of filming, Tunisia saw
The extent of Arrakis' dunes, covering close to 90 % of
the planet if we take the quote above at face value, merits
some consideration. This is far more even than Titan, the
most dune-covered world we know of (a region on Titan,
observed to become damp with methane rainfall, was
named Arrakis Planitia in 2010). Sand formation must be
somewhat self-limiting: once most of the bedrock is cov-
ered up, there is not much of it to be eroded. Some mech-
anism for segregating sand sources and sinks must be
applied for sand production to continue. While there are
doubtless exoplanets which may have had seas in the past
but are dry now and may well have extensive dunefields, it
seems improbable that any are so nearly completely covered
in deep sand.
The thick sand deposits on Arrakis serve as the habitat of
the topic's iconic giant sandworms. The bioenergetics of
locomotion through sand on such a large scale do not seem
to have been physically evaluated—on this point we must
concede artistic license. The Fremen track sandworms
through surface disturbances, or 'wormsign'; were they to
explore the developments in ground-penetrating radar we
discuss in Chap. 16 of this topic, they might find that
technology superior for this application.
 
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