Posted on 08/31/2018 11:33:46 PM PDT by vannrox
n July of this year (2015), NASA’s New Horizons mission will fly past Pluto and its moons. It will map the surface of the Plutonian system in unprecedented detail, revealing craters and other surface features for the first time. In preparation for the deluge of newly discovered craters, mountains, crevasses and other surface features, Mamajek et al. discuss a naming system for Pluto and its moons.
Pluto is one of the last large planetesimals in the Solar system to have its surface imaged in detail. Pluto’s surface features will reveal the history of its life in the alien conditions at the outer-most edge of our Solar system. The images on the right were taken by the Hubble space telescope. They show Pluto’s surface at different times during a single rotation. Fuzzy blobs of colour hint at interesting surface features.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) is pretty strict about naming conventions. To name anything in the Solar system you have to submit a naming request which goes through an approval stage. They wouldn’t, for example, like the surface features of pluto to be named after the discoverer’s cats.
When Pluto was discovered back in 1930 by Clyde Tombaugh, it was named, as was traditional, after a Roman deity: Pluto, the god of the underworld. To continue along the hell theme, the IAU states that the surface features of Pluto should be named after “Underworld deities”. But how many of those can there be? Won’t we run out pretty quickly? And what about different classes and sub-classes of surface features? Take Triton, for example. It’s a moon of Neptune and, arguably the most Pluto-like object in the inner Solar system. On Triton’s surface (which has already been imaged), there are 12 different classes of surface feature. In this white paper,
(Excerpt) Read more at astrobites.org ...
It’s a few years old, but new for FR. Enjoy.
Red shirt ......Plateau? Canyon? no...red shirt crater - where meteorites go to die....
It is interesting that they would name a planet after Mickey Mouse’s dog.
Are they going to name one after “Yeoman Janice Rand’’( hubba hubba!) aka Actress Grace Lee Whitney?
I thought that it was the other way around. The planet came first, then the cartoon dog.
They named the back hole “Sulu.”
Sulu’s is on Uranus.
Earthcentric bias with planetoid stereotyping!!
Pluto, the god of the underworld
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FWIW - Pluto, the Roman version of the Old Kingdom Egyptian god: Sokar, Guardian of the Underworld, who later merged with another god to become Osiris ... and so on
... or Jeri Ryan (”two of 38”)
How does one decide which crater has the most swagger? You can’t assign Kirk to some lesser hole, although in a pinch he’ll settle for a green one.
Uh... I think that was a joke.
If they could name one "Uranus," they could name one anything.
They should also name a pair of mountains Mansfield.
That’s funny. Too bad they didn’t have Star Trek sunshades back then.
Tribble Trench ?
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