[X] My Assistant

[Habukaz]

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

[alan]

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.

[mcaplinger]

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.

What does "too late" mean? The MSL team sometimes uses "Mount Sharp" in publications, but it's never going to be an official IAU name. The NH team uses their names in LPSC abstracts, with a caveat of "all feature names here are informal". I expect we've got a few hundred years at least before the names of surface features on Pluto are of more than academic interest.

I suspect the lack of progress is a mixture of the general slowness of the process and some real controversy. Perhaps surprisingly, the IAU seems to have blessed the use of Charon as the home of sci-fi names. On the other hand, some of the NH team's suggestions are likely never going to be approved by IAU because they simply don't fit with the established naming conventions.

http://www.geekwire.com/2015/pluto-we-have...ly-on-iau-maps/

I'd guess this has been discussed ad nauseum on other threads.