Celebrity names now mark places on Pluto’s moon Charon

Pluto’s largest moon, long seen as a mysterious smudge at the outer reaches of our solar system, was revealed in 2015 closeup images to be pocked with craters, mountains and steep-sided depressions called chasmas. Now, 12 of those topographical features have names.

Charon’s six most prominent craters were named for fictional explorers, including Dorothy who visited the fantastical land of Oz, time traveler Revati from the ancient Indian epic Mahabharata, and Nemo for the captain of the ship Nautilus in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
Three chasmas received nautically themed names — Argo for the Greek ship sailed by Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece, Caleuche for the mythological ghost ship said to travel off the Chilean coast, and Manjet for one of Egyptian sun god Ra’s vessels. The names for Charon’s mountains honor three real-life luminaries: film director Stanley Kubrick and science fiction writers Octavia E. Butler and Sir Arthur C. Clarke.

The new names, announced by International Astronomical Union April 11, have an appeal that “engages [the public] in science,” says planetary scientist Rita Schulz, who heads the union’s naming group. And that, she adds, “is quite good.”