Very soon we're going to have a hell of a lot of features of Victoria to discuss, so I think it's about time we had some way of telling each other which bits we are talking about. (A bit like naming craters Alpha, Beta.. Zeta, etc)

I know Stu started to label a few features, but only a few, and there are A LOT!

I've tried to divide Victoria into logical sections and given each a letter. Then within each region I've numbered each point of the rim that appears to bend in the opposite way to the curve of the crater, hence numbering "Capes". Some are quite subtle and therefore may not be seen very well in reality but I think it's better to have them all in there.

Here is the map, it is externally linked so should be updated with the latest version. (Now updated with the (half scale) HiRise image)



(Click image for larger version, ~400kB)

So:
A1 is Cape Verde
A2 is The Beacon
P4 is Cabo Frio
and as of the 943 drive we can see the far rim between E2 and K1.

Of course I'm sure that some of the more prominent features will soon acquire more meaningful names, but this should still help us all follow what we're all talking about!

Bays are given the same designation as the cape on there 'clockwise side', thus most of the major bays (which tend to separate lettered regions) then have a "1" designation (making the rule easier to remember). Bay A1, where Oppy is heading first is Duck Bay and the bay that Fredk has measured the slope of is Bay I1. Most of the major bays are marked in red.

JPL's names are also added, as are their numbered capes and bays - in square brackets.
Informal UMSF names are added within round brackets.

James

Works for me, James.

--Bill

Coincidentally, Mark Adler (who has been doing a nice job as Emily's guest blogger this week) just posted some relevant comments regarding this very topic. He's described the naming convention that the MER team is using for the features at Victoria. It would be nice if we could use the same names, but unfortunately it will probably be some time before we learn more about the official names...so your proposal works for me, as well.

James, I was just trying to think of a temporary naming scheme myself - again today you've managed to transform my wishes into reality!

I'm OK with your scheme as far as capes go, but what do you suggest for naming bays? "The bay between H1 and I1" is a bit tedious, but perhaps just "bay H1-I1"?

And only yesterday I was just starting to think - "I wonder if I could estimate the slope of some bays using the MOC and Navcams" before seeing your post doing the very calculation. Great minds think alike, as they say.



Yeah I was thinking about that, and I think "Bay H1-I1", etc. is they way to go, unless we adopted some convention where the bay has the same name as the cape clockwise(or anti) of it. But maybe that would get confusing, "Is it the cape clockwise of the bay, or the bay clockwise of the cape?"

James

Doesn't matter; no-one paid the slightest bit of attention to my suggestions anyway. Numbering makes sense, tho if we were being daring and creative we could come up with something better I'm sure... naaah, let's stick with numbers, your map is excellent James, a great starting point. I'm sure we'll have the real names soon enough, they're probably already decided upon anyway by the MER guys.

Alike indeed! But you know, there are plenty more bays on this "shore", and there's nothing like independent confirmation to boost the confidence of even a "great mind".

But it's not like we can't think of a thousand other things to do with these pictures, and oh yeah, almost forgot, perhaps actually get a bit of work done that we're actually paid to do!

Actually, thinking about it some more, this could work. If bays are given the same designation as the cape on there clockwise side then most of the major bays (which tend to seperate lettered regions) would have a "1" designation making the scheme easier to remember. Duck Bay would be "Bay A1" and the bay that Fredk has measured the slope of would be "Bay I1"

James

Cape and Bay works, too. We can adopt a temporary alpha-numeric scheme and revise that to whatever JPL/Cornell use. Remember, "informal" and formal names.

I was in-informally thinking along the lines of salients and recesses, but this ain't tectonic...

--Bill

Does anybody know when the clean (i.e. unlabelled) version of the latest Victoria base image will be released by MSSS? And what number will it have?

Castor

For a date I don't know for sure; there was talk about an October release.
About numbering it should be S11-00471.

I like this abbreviated bay notation. Let's use it!

I think all the features should be named for all the diehards in both forums who talk about The Rovers and their Journeys and Discoveries. It would be great to honor us all.

Just imagine seeing Tesheiner Ridge, fredk outlook, Horton's viewpoint, Stu Ripples down at the bottom, Doug's overhang or jamescanvin Coffee Stop at Beacon??? LOL

With all due respect to our Boss, I'm not entirely sure I want to see hi-resolution, enhanced views of Doug's, er, "overhang"...!!!!

I'm with you on that Bobby! Also, I seem to remember after Stu pointed out the interesting south-west bays, some possible gullies, interesting overhangs and some other features, that someone else suggested at least one being named "Stu's inlets" (or ramps, bays, whatever they were being referred to at the time.) Can't find the post though... this was a quite a few months back, IIRC.

IMO A1, B1 etc are (a) very dull, ( entirely arbitrary ( c) forgettable (d) no fun! These are "informal" names after all, it's not as if it really means anything except here on UMSF, for the next few days/weeks until we learn the official names. Also, a semi-objective way to allocate names would be by total number of posts... eg. on the route map thread, that gives us the following candidate names:

Tesheiner
djellison
dilo
Bill Harris
Sunspot
Phil Stooke
RNeuhaus
CosmicRocker
Pando
dot.dk
jamescanvin
climber
Shaka
gregp1962
alan
ElkGroveDan
mhoward
Bob Shaw
Toma B
algorimancer
OWW
SigurRosFan
paxdan
ustrax
dvandorn
ToSeek
lyford
Nirgal
TheChemist
marswiggle
hortonheardawho
[... etc ..]

...which would all look good with 'Cape' or 'Bay' after them.