BuzzFeed have gotten their hands on how the NH team plans to name features on both Pluto and Charon: http://www.buzzfeed.com/alexkasprak/the-vader-crater
The names give some clues for how the science team is interpreting things: you find things named fossa, vallis, cavus, rupes, dorsa and linea - all on Pluto.
EDIT: The maps on the mission website:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=263
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=261
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?page=1&gallery_id=2&image_id=262
Cousteau Rupes! It's an escarpment!
Charon has Star Trek and Star Wars names...
I've uploaded a version of the Johns Hopkins/SWRI map labeled with feature names at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/135024395@N07/19915056650/in/dateposted-public/
Edit: Added Charon based on your map, Bjorn: https://www.flickr.com/photos/135024395@N07/20097066892/in/dateposted-public/
Interesting how they've set up the various schema. Charon's Chasmata are named after fictional vehicles, craters after characters, ect. I can imagine people developing an interest in planetary cartography thanks to what they're doing here.
They have developed a unique naming strategy. At their public naming campaign website, http://www.ourpluto.org/home, there is the full (and wacky) list of names submitted to the IAU for their perusal.
Initial Proposal to the IAU, July 7, 2015
http://www.ourpluto.org/pluto
The Naming of Names at a site is a long and honorable geological tradition. During the delay in getting out preliminary names for the Rosetta mission I managed to go through the Rocky and Bulwinkle pantheon for my informal names...
--Bill
Just a little cleanup for my Pluto map:
MOD NOTE: One post (& two responses to same) hidden that was less about cartography than it was about IAU complaints & snark re the NH team. See rules 1.9 and 2.6.
An exhaustive treatment of the proposed names from io9's Mika McKinnon, complete with biographies and illustrations: http://space.io9.com/were-actively-creating-the-geekiest-world-in-the-univer-1721448557
Nice to see that they have named large features after Tombaugh and Lowell.
I hope they can find someplace to fit Vesto Slipher and Carl Lampland.
That's awesome, no more of that blank space! With it one can guess that Balrog Macula and Cthulhu Regio to a lesser extent may extend well into the southern hemisphere. Perhaps like Paul Schenk's map of Triton, any Charonshine images could be used to fill further data into this region to confirm it.
With the use of metadata of LORRI frames I clarify trajectory of New Horizons (error is about 0.000002 on distancies to Pluto at snapshots momens). After that it made possible to simulate all frames with subpixel accuracy. As a bonus Pluto radius was determined: R=240.89 km * u, where 'u' is LORRI pixel size in microradians.
If we assume that the under-Charon avarage point has longitude 0°, then the map of Pluto (for example http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...t&id=37374) is offset by 1.6 ° to the east. So I had to make such correction to map, that the image consistent with LORRI frames.
Nevertheless, clear to see that there are still quite a strong distortion in the map.
Another file, which I posted earlier in http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=8071&st=30:
Rebuilt pictures with the map
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/pmap_cyl_PS723_HR-g.jpg
and obtained with offset = 0
Interesting in that I had also noticed a North-South in my map compared with the official one near Tombaugh Regio. If we have the lat/lon subpoints readily available for the images (and if they are accurate) we can perhaps check and refine the maps better.
Bah, apparently there will be http://www.geekwire.com/2015/pluto-we-have-a-problem-some-geographical-names-may-not-fly-on-iau-maps/.
An http://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1502/ already says something similar:
IAU should have had at least a provisional, if not formal, series of names already in place before the Pluto encounter. The time of the flyby has been known for ten years and many albedo features on Pluto have been known for longer. The surface of Charon was a general unknown, but give what we know of similar bodies there were to be Regios Chasmas and Craters to be named.
Although IAU did have the "exclusion disclaimer" in their Spring 2015 (!!) naming campaign announcement, this was a "shot across the bow" in response to prior discussions with the NH Team.
Informal names are good. I've got many 67P/C-G features named after the "Rocky and Bullwinkle" pantheon. Let me tell you about Fenwick Boulder on Frostbite Falls Planum...
--Bill
Names are always a sign of the times, and Pluto's naming represents a turn towards pop culture that would have been unthinkable when names were being applied to the front/back sides of the Moon, or Mars, Mercury, or the Galileans.
Decades and centuries hence, the names on Pluto will identify who and when the namers were just as the names on the backside of the Moon are an eternal nod to Mother Russia.
It is Sputnik Planum AFAIC. The IAU can't change THAT.
Don't worry too much about names. Anyone can name anything, anyway they like. The only question is whether other people will use those names.
For instance, near my house in London, Ontario, down by the river, there's a big boulder which we (my family) call Mermaid Rock. Nobody else uses the name. That's fine. I could make a map of Europe with my own idiosyncratic names for all the countries and major cities. Nobody else would use them. National Lampoon once published a world map full of humorous names. Anyone can name anything.
The IAU has an important role in deciding official names, but they have no say over unofficial names. The only question is whether anyone will use the names. So most planetary scientists will stick with official names, but you still see references even in refereed papers to Inca City on Mars, or the Schneckenberg on the Moon. And of course all those names of rocks etc. at the Mars landing sites.
As for Pluto, maybe there will be two maps, with official names and unofficial names. That's OK, we can cope with it. Chances are most people will use official names and a few will use the unofficial names that become most well-known. Like Mount Sharp on Mars, not official but we all know what it means.
Phil
I don't agree that names have the capacity to be official. I wouldn't even accept as valid a statement that a person or group considers their names for extraterrestrial features to be official unless they also claimed to have ownership of the features in question. Otherwise, they either don't understand the meaning of the word "official" and that they mean to say they like those names and feel others should adopt them, or are simply speaking a different (though very similar) language than I speak.
I've noticed, throughout my lifetime, that people like to throw the word "official" around, usually affixing it to something to superficially strengthen an argument or to try to build some precedent for future trust. I don't recall reading about the Prime Minister of Pluto or the Plutonian Senate delegating the task of naming features on Pluto to the IAU so they'd have more time for skiing at Norgay Montes.
I recognize that many people (and other entities) adopt IAU naming for extraterrestrial features, and that's perfectly fine; it can be very helpful to have a go-to source for names that you feel confident many other people with whom you communicate will have similarly adopted. That doesn't make those names official, unless you take a more relaxed meaning of that word, allowing for there to be multiple, different, official names for a thing, provided by multiple, different sources. As far as I am aware, however, the IAU has not claimed ownership of Pluto or any geographical subset of it, nor have they been designated the official namers by anyone who does make such a claim of ownership, so the names they assign are not even considered by them to be official (though they may say that; as I said earlier, they'd simply be misspeaking in that case, actually meaning that they like those names and feel others should adopt them).
As Phil said, people will call things whatever they want, and fortunately, usefully, a lot of people will gravitate toward the same names, making communication about those features simple and convenient. I think where Phil and I probably disagree is on the validity of affixing the word "official" to anyone's provided names.
Edit (added 2015-08-31): Note: I do not mean to sound critical of the IAU. As I said, it is very helpful for people to be able to refer to features on other worlds by names that others will understand, and the IAU is (I believe) the most popular source for such names and assigns them with a consistent style/convention. My above comments are merely me engaging in pedantry with regard to how people misuse the word "official". Personally, I'll be using whatever names I'm used to (currently, those the team has come up with) until a time comes when most people are using different names, at which time, on a name-by-name basis, I'll transition to using whatever those are, irrespective of who came up with them, so that I can be understood.
The topic of naming might be considered as an addition to rule 1.9. [MOD- Noted.]
http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/Introduction and http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/Rules are the most succinct statements of current IAU policy. And yes, IAU uses the word "official" a lot; e.g., from http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/Page/FAQ
MOD NOTE: Recall that Aeolis Mons--as it is officially named by the IAU--at the MSL landing site is unofficially known as Mt. Sharp. Same principle applies here. Feel free to call Plutonian features anything you'd like, and it's extremely likely that some of the informal names will persist indefinitely...but the IAU names will be official.
Debates and/or complaints about the validity of IAU names will not be permitted. Many planetary science pros are in fact IAU members (see rule 2.6) and rants in general are not allowed under rule 2.4. As mcaplinger previously noted, rule 1.9 covers contentious topics that really have no bearing on science; although IAU naming processes and conventions are not specifically cited in this rule, note that a previous IAU action is. That may be indicative.
Nothing wrong with multiple names as long as we stay consistent. Anyone remember Ultreya Abyss aka El Dorado at Gusev?
"Ultreya" was hardly widespread and was an annoying local quirk. And it was more a rant proposing an oddball theory of the nature of the feature than simply an alternate name.
--Bill
The problem with more than one set of names is that it effects communication negatively - the reader will need more familiarity with the subject in order to know which names refer to the same thing.
(I'll make a biased exception for names like the heart, because they are highly intuitive )
A point of comparison:
The various Mars rovers had mission planning that included the use of unofficial names for, e.g., individual rocks, so that science teams could coordinate effectively. This was absolutely necessary for daily rover operations.
The Pluto observations, on the other hand, were all performed according to a pre-programmed script, so there was little to no operational need for unofficial names. It may be useful to have unofficial names in order to begin scientific work, but I don't think there's much hazard of serious problems at this point. Any papers referring to specific features will probably be published after some of the names have been finalized, so in those cases, the authors can perform an edit before final submission.
I once caught an error in the naming of linear features on Europa, where published papers and the USGS map were in conflict. An unfortunate glitch, but also a pretty small and temporary one. And that was due not to unofficial names, but because the continuity of two intertangled linea was hard to track with the human eye.
Mod is great!
Kneel Before Mod!
hehe... but anyway, given the pace that the IAU naming process works at, I don't think we have to worry about conflicting names for some time. So I don't expect to see a lot of conflicts.
Icosahedral projection of Pluto map translated from scalbers map:
Color icosahedral projection of Pluto map from scalbers original map http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/pluto/pluto_rgb_cyl_16k.png
What an interesting projections. Could it be printed, cut up and folded into a, uh, penta-whatever sphere?
--Bill
Printed
HAHA!
Great seeing someone try it out Gennady.
Seems like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsdxgSxdgak&feature=youtu.be could be a really good approximation for a globe. Translating the map into the strip could prove a bit more difficult.
Might be me.
I made those foldable maps of several asteroids, and Phobos and Deimos that got a bit of attention a few years ago.
World maps with constant-scale natural boundaries, (samples at www.rightbasicbuilding.com).
As well as maps of spherical bodies that also fold to solids.
Trouble is, if trouble it be, that my maps of spherical bodies fold up to condensations of the sphere rather than nice spheres.
Other projection systems based on platonic solids generate better spheres. Some better than others: the icosahedral is pointy; the daisy-hemispheres is pretty good. The "apple-peel" example above is especially nice! I've not seen it before; someone should take a bow.)
So, anyway, mine come out lumpy or misshapen in an irregular manner that is a function of the natural boundary system selected as the map's border. The advantage is not so much the globe as it is the map itself, which is also irregular (sometimes highly irregular) but precisely so to display global patterns. A map of earth using (subsets of) continental divides is nice for contemplating global geomorphology, and can be rearranged for different perspectives on the subject.
I'm highly intrigued by the new information on Pluto, and begin to strategize a boundary system to experiment with, similar to what my coauthor and I did at last year's lpsc with Miranda, Ganymede, Dione and Enceladus.
Consider a bifurcating centroid-tree through Sputnik and then out the white lobes as a starting system. Not sure how far the apparent evidence could take it, perhaps branching again, from there.
It may be possible to identify points of interest and districts of distinction on an unseen hemisphere based on large-scale organization of an observed hemisphere. At least for bodies with shell-like crusts in existence long enough to have attained gross equilibrium. (This worked especially well on Ganymede, and not too bad on Dione, but of course this was reverse engineering because those surfaces are known in entirety or nearly so.) Miranda was another test, but of course the back side will remain unseen for the foreseeable future.
Pluto might be a nice test body for this conjecture, because some information about the hemisphere unobserved by New Horizons is in those 2011 blurry Hubble images, which some maps above have included.
No promises. I may get distracted by 67-P Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Or maybe Bennu.
Also JRehling did one for Titan - see here: https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCIQFjAAahUKEwi_1vKpnuPHAhWF2xoKHf72Aeo&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftitansaturnsmoon.wordpress.com%2F2013%2F01%2F02%2Fmake-your-own-titan-globe%2F&usg=AFQjCNH0mVfgvgpbw1PjCG0CjAYPLR3png
Something like that would be very nice for Pluto.
My knowledge of cartography is pretty limited so apologies if this isn't useful to many frequenting this thread. I was pretty fascinated when I saw that apple-peeling projection and set out to find anything I could. Seems like interest in such a projection is limited, at least from a flat perspective sense but seems pretty useful in making globes. The relevant function to generate the line is called a 'https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line' I believe which is essentially a line that crosses the longitudinal coordinates at a constant angle. https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/loxodrome/ another page also about rhumb lines. Can't seem to find anyone else that has translated this into a physical model though.
I think to create what was in the video I posted earlier, he probably takes a stereographic polar map and then overlays the function line and then does the opposite for the other hemisphere.
If it were that simple, I can promise that I would have posted that. The person running that site does allow a person to upload an equirectangular projected map and and then submit it for purchase. I don't know if purchases are international or Japan only, didn't look that far into it. The function seems like it could be worked out with some time and MapMath for Gimp however.
Yesterday Greg Smyer-Rumsby of Astronomy Now tweeted this printable project. I can report that a ledger-size printout produces a globe (roughly speaking) about 6" across--a nice size for my office, taking a little over an hour to complete (including changing glues and finding thinner forming sticks as it came together).
https://twitter.com/gregsmyerumsby/status/640137468071804929
Update: the result:
Hello folks. I've been a lurker for some time now, but I can't resist plugging myself in this thread.
For some time now, I've been using 3d printing to make little astronomical globes, particularly of the most rarely found as a physical globes objects of the solar system.
So for example, here's my Pluto & Charon to scale!
How neat-- I like your work. I've been interested in a model of the Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.
--Bill
EDIT-- and let me add asteroid Ceres to the interest-list.
It's great! I also thought about how to print Pluto in 3D. But my printer is monochrome and would have to reflex color map by the surface heights ...
Vaebn,
Great work! Bookmarked for future presents. Those tiny planets are just adorable.
Bill (also see PM) / Gennady / Hendric. Thanks!
On a sidenote, here's another idea I have been toying with, you may be interested in.
Nasa offers a wonderful free utility called g.projector that can take a cylindrical map and do various projections with it. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/
If someone takes a Pluto and/or other globe map, and did a "Sinusoidal" projection, and then in the settings selected the "30'' Gores" version of it, he ends up with a map like this:
I just put together a map version including some of the imagery from last week. Along with "raw" NH LORRI images, this utilizes the nicely done mosaic from Machi from 170000km distance, and an earlier one posted by Herobrine from a closer vantage point. HST from 1994 is in the southern hemisphere.
The first test of automatic map generation:
Pluto
This question (referring to Yutu Linea) has a good bit of fascination to it. It might show up near the limb of the sunlit crescent some hours after closest approach. The sun is rising just above the horizon from this location. The ground track takes some interesting turns as in this graphic excerpted from one of Alan Stern's presentations:
The next approximation:
Pluto and Charon:
I take a picture area of the sky, where was Pluto and Charon:
A daisy petal foldable globe of Pluto is over here:
http://rightbasicbuilding.com/2015/12/20/heres-a-daisy-pedal-foldable-map-of-pluto/
Thanks, Chuck. Is a Charon foldable globe in the works?
AND while I'm thinking of it in the "places and names" section-- has there ever been a proclamation of official IAU names for the Pluto-Charon system? As far as I can see we're still ticking along with "unofficial names". Odd, since Ceres is updated with official names through this month.
--Bill
a Charon foldable globe?
Yes, Charon is on my radar, but awaiting the more complete coverage release they promise here:
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/image.php?gallery_id=2&image_id=264:
"Many additional images now stored on the spacecraft’s digital data recorders are expected to be transmitted "home" in fall 2015 and these will be used to complete the global map."
I'm prepping the Pluto data now for LPSC 47. If anyone can convert the colorized Pluto image to a simple cylindrical, I'd be happy to immediately update the Pluto daisy-petal map.
Anyone?
c
Would someone be able to remind me where the best (possibly) official Pluto map is available? IIRC this is in "enhanced" color (IR/R/B) and about 18000 pixels across. It may or may not have feature names added. Thanks...
As far as I know, http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Science-Photos/pics/Shenk.jpg is the current best map available. Its missing the other half of the imaged regions and is only a composition of the red and blue channels from MVIC though.
Have we ever gotten official Pluto-system names or are we still moseying along with informal names?
--Bill
Other than the general categories, I don't see anything at http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/ about official Pluto nomenclature.
See https://www.iau.org/public/themes/naming/ for a description of the process.
I wonder if they have submitted the names, or if they are planning to use the names informally until it is too late for the IAU to overrule them.
The IAU may been useful in the days when you documented a comet discovery by sending a telegram to Harvard, et al. I rather like the informal naming conventions on our non-planet system Pluto and Charon.
--Bill
A tale I've mentioned before:
The USGS map and some scientific paper(s) used different names for one of Europa's linea features. As far as I could tell, I was the first person to catch the discrepancy. And what of it? It's never going to be a household name. Both the USGS designations and the paper are and will always be obscure. For the difference between de jure and de facto to mean much, there has to be more than a trivial number of people paying attention.
At home, I have a browser plug-in configured to replace all occurrences of the word "official" with "IAU" in any paragraph that also contains the word "name" or "definition" on this site. My experience here improved significantly after I did that.
EDIT: In response to mcaplinger's post below (replying here so as not to continue the discussion below the red text (yes, I know that's cheating)):
MOD NOTE: Aaaaand that's the end of the IAU tangent here.
repost from a different forum
---
this is a VERY enhanced and cleaned up map
with the missing data filed in with the data from "Marc Buie , et al" map i created years ago
based on "PIA19956" and "PIA19858"
2k lores ( 0 to 360 !!! )
http://imgbox.com/rPkyoxJH
16k zip
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6ZYAd08tZL-QW1nNnl4T1pMeDA/view?usp=sharing
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-iau-set-pluto-naming-themes
Finally, Pluto features got their first official names by the IAU.
No big surprises, but it's good to be official.
https://www.iau.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iau1704/
Regards,
Marc.
Pluto in Google Maps is quite nice: http://google.com/maps/space/pluto
Charon IAU Nomenclature
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20180411
Interestingly modern fictional characters have made a toehold.
I made this map of Charon by combining the 12K USGS map with a map that was made from the Lowell Observatory back in 2000. I then overlaid color from the color IAU map and extrapolated color from one of the mid latitude grey areas into the southern hemisphere. I avoided using the color for the Mordor Regio (no official name yet for the giant north polar macula) or any other particularly dark area since the Lowell map shows the southern hemisphere to be brighter. It is interesting how well the albedo areas on the Lowell map roughly line up with the NH map.
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49983125091_5bd2b8db9a_o.png
This will likely be the highest coverage map of Charon until either something else flys by or a more powerful Earth based telescope images it.
16K Map of Pluto made by combining USGS map with additional areas from a map from NASA and using maps from Hubble to fill in most of the rest then a map from Lowell observatory to fill in that tiny south pole area. Color from the NASA map was overlain with extrapolation from mid latitudes for the southern hemisphere.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/50079014212/
(2K preview)
I recently got a new computer. With it, I have constructed the highest resolution color map of Pluto. I had to divide it into 4 sections because Flickr wouldn't accept the 24K beast as one or even two pieces. The map can be seen in this album.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/albums/72157717015414428
https://www.flickr.com/photos/60012030@N02/albums/72157717015414428
Spectacular. Great work!
I don't know if I'm posting this in the right topic...
Reading Alan Stern's December 17, 2021 post "The PI's Perspective: Looking Back, Looking Forward" on the New Horizons website - http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/PI-Perspectives.php?page=piPerspective_12_17_2021 - I noticed this excerpt:
„For this update, I also want to mention to you that a number of Pluto system and Arrokoth surfaces features have received official names that our project team proposed (...) They also include the first surface feature named on Pluto’s moon Nix, and an official name, “Sky,” for Arrokoth’s largest crater.”
However, I can not find maps, pictures or even some sketches with these new names on Arrokoth and Nix, or any further information on this matter anywhere.
Can anyone help me please?
And here it is!!!
Thank you!
http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/News-Center/News-Article.php?page=20220210
(Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Southwest Research Institute)
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