Tatoo I/Legends

For other uses, see Tatoo.

"And this is no place to be without transportation once those twin suns really start cookin'!"

―Han Solo^[src]

Tatoo I, also known as G1, was one of the yellow stars at the heart of the Tatoo system. A binary star, its partner was Tatoo II.

Description

Tatoo I was a G1-type main sequence binary star, sister of G2-type Tatoo II. They formed the Tatoo system with the planets Tatooine, Ohann, and Adriana. The system lay at the crossroads of the Triellus Trade Route and the Old Corellian Run in the Arkanis sector of the the Slice's Outer Rim segment.^[1] In Huttese, the dominant language on Tatooine, the twin suns were known as "Gi Dopa Gasha."^[3]

Tatoo I was formed when a hydrogen molecular cloud collapsed. Throughout most of its life, energy was produced by nuclear fusion, which converted hydrogen into helium. Each second, millions of metric tons of hydrogen were converted into energy within the Tatoo I's core, producing neutrinos and solar radiation. It had a lifespan of roughly ten billion years as a main sequence star.^[1] Tatoo I did not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. At the end of their lifespan, stars of its kind entered a red giant phase, their outer layers expanding as the hydrogen fuel in the core was consumed and the core contracted and heated up.

Culture

Children on Tatooine would tell stories of huge, powerful dragons that lived inside the two great suns that shone down upon them. Smaller cousins of these dragons were said to live in the fusion furnaces that powered many types of machinery and vehicles.^[4]

As a slave boy, Anakin Skywalker would climb to the roof of his hovel at night, lie back, and imagine he was as far from Tatooine as possible. A decade later, in 23 BBY, an 18-year-old Skywalker found himself in the Fondor system, 40,000 light-years away from the hovel's roof, gazing up at the binary stars that he knew to be Tatoo I and Tatoo II—the twin suns of his home planet—and he imagined the day when he would return to Tatooine and free his enslaved mother, Shmi.^[5]

History

See also: History of the Tatoo system

Some early explorers thought the first planet of the system to be a third star, because of its blazing light reflected by its sodium-rich deserts.^[2]

Tatooine had a strong presence in the Force, which led the Infinite Empire of the Rakata to the star system of Tatoo I. The collapse of their empire in 25,200 BBY caused the system to be left alone for some millennia.

The Galactic Republic explored the segment of the Slice in which Tatoo I was located during the Great Manifest Period and the Indecta Era. By 1004 BBY, the nearby region belonged to the Brotherhood of Darkness, including Hutt Space, a large region of the known galaxy controlled by the Hutt species. After the Seventh Battle of Ruusan in 1000 BBY, the region remained in Hutt control until the reign of the Galactic Empire.

During the Galactic Civil War, the system changed hand several times: its region was taken from the New Republic by the Empire during the Thrawn campaign, but was left after the Grand Admiral's death. Later, the space around Tatoo I was controlled by the Galactic Alliance, until the Sith–Imperial War 127–130 ABY, when the Fel Empire conquered much of the known galaxy, but was quickly replaced by Darth Krayt's Sith Empire.^[1]

Behind the scenes

Tatoo I was created for Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, but technically it appeared first in the novelization of the film in December 1976, half a year before the premiere.

Although the famous binary sunset scenes both depicted the two suns as being of similar size, other sources show one sun significantly larger than the other. No explanation for this has been given.