Pluto System Cartography, places and names |
Pluto System Cartography, places and names |
Jul 28 2015, 08:17 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 423 Joined: 13-November 14 From: Norway Member No.: 7310 |
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: Pluto Sputnik plain and surroundings Charon This post has been edited by Habukaz: Dec 20 2015, 09:11 PM -------------------- |
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Aug 27 2015, 12:43 AM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 244 Joined: 2-March 15 Member No.: 7408 |
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. |
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