Science

Mount Doom, Einstein Crater, and Arrakis Plains: Geekiest Place Names in the Solar System

The solar system is full of stuffy, old mythology naming its planets and moons. But scientists have also had the chance to add a little spice here and there, deriving their place names from really geeky sources, including Tolkien. In this gallery, we take a look at some of the nerdiest places in the solar system.
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  • Titan King of the Geeks
  • Mount Doom
  • Scientists in the Solar System
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Ancient civilizations gave us the names of planets in our solar system. But as modern scientists have zoomed in on these bodies and their moons, they have needed to find names for ever more features on their surfaces. Following the tradition of naming planets after Greek and Roman deities, most place names in the solar system are derived from mythology. Thus, mountains, craters, valleys, and other geologic features on Venus come from names for sky goddesses, water goddesses, desert goddesses, war goddesses, or goddesses of love, fate, fortune, and fertility. But sometimes it seems that astronomers get a little tired of always asking their mythology friends for new pantheons to mine for names. Scientists are, after all, just as geeky as any other nerd subculture and they like to stamp the solar system with lesser-known minutiae from their favorite books or devote a crater to a scientific hero. For instance, on Nov. 13 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) approved the name Mount Doom for a peak on Saturn’s moon Titan. According to the Lord of the Rings series, this mountain lies at the heart of Mordor and is the only site where the One Ring can be unmade. Titan is like a geek heaven, with place names coming from both J. R. R. Tolkien’s mythos and Frank Herbert’s Dune series. To come up with such names, members of an IAU task group agree on a theme — let’s say, naming all the craters on Jupiter’s moon Europa after Celtic gods and heroes – and label any known features. As better maps are made of a planet or moon, other people may suggest a name for newly resolved features. The names are reviewed, objected to, debated, and eventually approved and published online. The process isn’t just for scientists; members of the public can submit suggestions as well. Maybe it’s time to start stamping the solar system with places like Westeros and Oz? While we can’t visit these features in person, many have been mapped by our robotic probes. Here we take a look at some images of the geekiest places in the solar system. Above:

Titan, King of the Geeks

The themes for most of Titan’s features follow the standard mythological criterion. Above you can see the enormous Xanadu region, the bright area just below and to the right of center. Xanadu is named after a legendary palace in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan. But all mountains on Titan are named for fictional mountains in the Lord of the Rings series, while all plains and labyrinth-like features are named for planets in the Dune series. Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute