I was just looking at the planetary names website and they now have new fully approved names for the Cassini discovered features on this moon so far (ie to about March 2006).

So, it looks like the Tiger Stripes are now to be called Alexandria, Baghdad, Cairo, and Damascus Sulcus, with Baghdad Sulcus passing over the South Pole. ABCD? It's tough to match them up and figure out which one is which on Steve's South Polar map.

Michael

Could someone please post the link to this site?

http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~perry/Ence...celadus_map.jpg

Enjoy! (map from Steve Albers)

Thanks very much, VP...quite illuminating!

In fact, I was struck by the fact that so much of the southern hemisphere's terrain looks "Europan". Can we draw some inferences here.... ?

USGS's Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature contains every official surface feature name in the Solar System beyond the Earth.

Awesome, VP! Your updated map would probably have pleased even caliph Harun Al-Rashid, Prince of True Believers!

Thanks, Jason. ACBD.

Michael

Are the Arabic names intended to evoke feelings that the Sulcus is an oasis? Or a tribute to the arabic astromers of yore? Or just a, "and now for something completely different!" moment?

No.
Enceladus has a naming convention that all names on the moon come from the Richard Burton version of the Arabian Nights.

The other moons of Saturn have:

Mimas: People and places from "Le Morte D'Arthur" by Thomas Malory

Dione: Peopla ena places from "Aeneid" by Virgil

Tethys: People and places from "Odyssey" by Homer

Rhea: People and places on Creation Myths

Iapetus: People and places from "The Song Of Roland"

Phoebe: People and places from "Jason And The Argonauts"

It is wierd that the south pole "Suici" just happens to be called "Baghdad"! Sometimes art and life does sometime mix!

Many of the icy sats have names related to various ancient and midieval literary sources, like Morte d'Artur for Mimas, The Odyssey for Tethys, and Arabian Nights for Enceladus. So all the names used on Enceladus are from characters and places mentioned in the Arabian Nights.

EDIT: looks like Angel got this.

I've updated the map to fix the incorrect use of Shirin (Al-Haddar crater had the suggested name of Shirin, but it was changed upon approval). I also added a fancy new scale bar. (EDIT: NOW it's updated... stupid case-sensitive file names...)

I should also point out that I started a project on Wikipedia to get all these features with names an article. I did this with the older names, and I have now started on the new names. If you would like to help, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geolo...es_on_Enceladus and look for the names highlighted in red to see which ones need names. Keep in mind that the Tiger Stripes have a collective article written before the names are announced: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Stripes_%28Enceladus%29 . See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghanim_%28crater%29 to see how I have been adding each name.

A new map with names based on the official base map has now been released:

http://astrogeology.usgs.gov/HotTopics/ind...adus-Names.html