Kirk, Spock and Sulu Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before — Charon!

Universe Today ^ | Bob King

[BenLurkin]

Four naming themes were selected for Charon’s features, three of which are based on fiction —

Fictional Explorers and Travelers,
Fictional Origins and Destinations,
Fictional Vessels —
and one on Exploration Authors, Artists and Directors.

Pluto’s features, in contrast, are named for both real people and places as well as mythological beings of underworld mythology. Clyde Tombaugh, the dwarf world’s discoverer, takes center stage, with his name appropriately spanning 990 miles (1,590 km) of frozen terrain nicknamed the “heart of Pluto”. Perhaps the most intriguing region of Pluto, it’s home to what appear to be glaciers of nitrogen ice still mobile at temperatures around –390°F (–234°C).

...

* Space Missions and Spacecraft – Sputnik, Voyager, Challenger
* Scientists and Engineers – Tombaugh, Lowell, Burney (after Venetia Burney, the young girl who named Pluto)
* Historic Explorers – Norgay, Cousteau, Bird
* Underworld Beings – Cthulu, Balrog (from Lord of the Rings), Anubis (Egyptian god associated with the afterlife)
* Underworlds and Underworld Locales – Tartarus (Greek “pit of lost souls”), Xibalba (Mayan underworld), Pandemonium (capital of hell in Paradise Lost)
* Travelers to the Underworld – Virgil (tour guide in Dante’s Divine Comedy), Sun Wukong (Monkey king of Chinese mythology), Inanna (ancient Sumerian goddess)

To keep them all straight, astronomers at the International Astronomical Union’s Working Group on Planetary System Nomemclature are charged with choosing themes for each planet, asteroid or moon along with individual names for craters, canyons, mountains, volcanoes based on those themes. Astronomers help the group by providing suggested themes and names. In the case of the Pluto system, the public joined in to help the astronomers by participating in the Our Pluto Naming Campaign.

[BenLurkin]

Check out whose name is right next to that of Ctulhu

A close-up slice of Plutonian landscape centered on Tombaugh Regio with informal names waiting for approval. Click for a large pdf file. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

[BenLurkin]

This image contains the initial, informal names being used by the New Horizons team for the features and regions on the surface of Pluto. The IAU will still need to give final approval. Click for a large pdf file. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

[Gefn]

Cthulhu Ping.

[DFG]

bookmark

[Ransomed]

They should just rename the whole thing Yuggoth.

Freegards

[higgmeister]

Can you imagine, if Tenzing Norgay was still alive, what he would have thought of this?

[Slings and Arrows]

I’m guessing that the Cthulhu Region contains the Mountains of Madness.

[Yashcheritsiy]

Nobody's been to Charon before?

I'm sure that will be news to the people who live there.

[Amagi]

[jmcenanly]

I was thinking of the world where these two came from, but that was Cheron, not Charon, neither which are to be confused with 2060 Chiron, a minor planet orbiting just outside the orbit of Saturn.

Just wait until we start naming features on worlds in other Solar systems.

[eclecticEel]

I think that’s for Sir Edmund, the explorer Hillary was retroactively named for.

[The_Media_never_lie]

Sulu went where no man should ever go.

[BenLurkin]

Yes.