CT Little Things in the OT

I've always assumed that in ANH the exhaust port (and trench run dogfight) was in the Equatorial trench but given the size here (1.5km approx.) that couldn't be the case!

Therefore what trench was the exhaust port in, and where was it located?

 

It's usually described as a "polar trench" running north-south, with the thermal exhaust port being in the "upper" hemisphere (the hemisphere with the superlaser) in EU and Newcanon diagrams of the Death Star.

 

^ We can clearly see in the Death Star diagrams displayed at the briefing on Yavin IV in ANH that the trench leading to the exhaust port is in the upper hemisphere.

 

The same diagrams that show the laser dish on the equator with the equator trench running either side of it?

 

^ Yes, the same diagrams that reveal the propulsion dish, usually obscured by the dark side of the Death Star (i.e. "dark side" as in "dark side of the moon").

Here is a better look at the original matte painting:

 

It seems to me a little more likely - that Lucas intended that to be the superlaser - then changed his mind. I don't think that the original Death Star Prop has that crater on the equator - though admittedly there's no good set of photos of it from all angles. Notice that the matte painting is much closer to being a perfect sphere, than the Death Star Prop from the completed movie was.

https://i.stack.imgur.com/dYiCG.jpg

 

Iron_lord

It seems to me a little more likely - that Lucas intended that to be the superlaser - then changed his mind.

I concur, but IMHO there are three good reasons to go with the propulsion dish located on the unseen, dark side of Death Star I (i.e. we'd be silly not to want that)

1. What we see onscreen is canon and the technical readouts both in the Hangar Bay 327 control room, during the Yavin IV briefing and - last but not least - Rogue One clearly reveal the "equator dish". The obvious question is automatically "Why don't we see the super weapon dish on the upper hemisphere?". I'd say that was for security concerns. All these Death Star plans revealed were construction plans for a space station, so even if these plans would have fallen into the 'wrong' hands, no one could have concluded it was a planet killer. The super weapon dish had been deliberately isolated from these plans. And the Alliance only needed the plans to cripple the main reactor (not the super weapon dish) to start the fatal chain reaction (I would further argue that Galen Erso didn't mess at all with the super weapon dish. That could or would have been the first and foremost target of the Alliance, hence the development of the super weapon dish was probably put under constant scrutiny by Imperial overseers)
2. The OT established that to jump into hyperspace you'd need "boosters". Solo suspected in ESB that there might have been something wrong with the "horizontal boosters", in ESB we saw the Star Destroyer Avenger adding its four (otherwise unused except in battle, compare ROJ) boosters to the three main engines to make the jump. Theoretically, Tarkin might have opted to use the 'lower gear shift' of the hyperdrive to follow the Falcon to the Yavin System (more like Star Trek's warp drive where you actually see your surroundings), but apparently the Death Star jumped into hyperspace (following a beacon signal) which Tarkin wasn't too comfortable with: You're sure the homing beacon is secure aboard their ship? I'm taking an awful risk, Vader. This had better work. (I suspect Tarkin was afraid that Solo might deliberately fly the Falcon through some uncharted territories filled with asteroid fields or worse...)
3. The propulsion dish as a recoil compensator when firing the super weapon: What we see being accelerated through the super weapon tubes inside in ANH to destroy Alderaan weren't some kind of 'laser' beams (in contrast to ROJ) but obviously energy beams with bulb-shaped pockets containing exotic or 'hypermatter':

There is a simple physical problem one needs to consider: All (sublight) propulsion rockets work on the principle of particle exhaust, the faster the particle exhaust, the higher the velocity your spaceship will eventually gain. Assuming the Death Star needed to hold its firing position, then the particle exhaust through the super weapon dish must have been balanced by a similar particle exhaust on the opposite side which is another strong argument for the existence of a propulsion dish on the dark side of the Death Star.

 

This is foreshadowing of Harrison playing Indy and you can't tell me otherwise

 

Something I just noticed a couple of nights ago when watching ROTJ...... when Artoo and Threepio are walking to Jabba's palace in the morning, the eaves of the palace are illuminated with cobalt blue lights. All of the years of watching it on VHS and then DVD, I had the exterior of the palace ingrained in my mind as being only rust-colored. In the evening, the exterior shot of the palace shows no cobalt blue lighting on the eaves. It seems the lighting had not been turned on yet.
I had wondered if the blue was merely an alteration for the Blu-ray release, so I checked my 2004 ROTJ DVD, and also the theatrical-release DVD / Laserdisc-port, and the blue lighting is there, but less noticeable, particularly on the smaller-screened Laserdisc-port DVD.

 

So I recently noticed while watching ROTJ that the wind chime things at the entrance to Jabba's throne room have these little dangling bird-shaped cutouts or something attached. I'm not quite sure why I find this so great, but for some reason I love it.

 

Here are instructions to make your own, or be inspired to make a variant of this style. Personally, I'd use something other than PVC.
http://ournerdhome.com/star-wars-windchimes/

 

"You came in that thing?! You're braver than I thought."

"...Nice.."
I never realized ESB calls back to this exchange with:

"He's this card player, gambler. scoundrel, you'd like him."

"...nice.."

 

Except Leia says thanks. According to the script anyway, which Carrie herself put in there (written by her in red ink on the margins of the script) as seen in this image: