skunkbear:NASA asked the world to help name the features of Pluto and its moons with the Our Pluto n
skunkbear:NASA asked the world to help name the features of Pluto and its moons with the Our Pluto naming campaign. Pluto’s mountains and valleys are named after historical explorers, scientists and engineers. On Charon (Pluto’s lumpy, largest moon) the names come from the world of fiction.There are a handful of characters from Star Wars and Star Trek, plus nods to The Lord of the Rings, Dr. Who and Alice in Wonderland. Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick (author and director, respectively, of 2001: A Space Odyssey) each get a mountain. Kaguya-hime is a little girl from Japanese folk-tales who travelled between the moon and Earth. Fans of Firefly will recognize Serenity Valley in the giant canyon that stretches across Charon’s equator. It is four times as long as the Grand Canyon, and twice as deep.Here’s a complete list of names and descriptions. These varied features - from relatively smooth planes to new craters - speak to surprisingly active geology. This image is a mosaic of pictures taken by the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager on NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft on July 14, 2015, overlaid with enhanced color from the Ralph/Multispectral Visual Imaging Camera. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI. -- source link
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