Naming Categories on Titan
The IAU has approved several changes to the nomenclature of Titan. No names are available (yet), but several changes are encouraging. First, the faculas will be named after islands on Earth (not politically independent). Faculae (groups of bright features) will be named after archipelagoes on Earth. Secondly, a new category has been approved, Flumina. These are channels on Titan that MAY carry liquid. They will be named after mythical or imaginary rivers.
The "categories" page was last updated July 5 so this kinda of old news but this is the first I have seen some of these changes on the web.
The "categories" page was last updated July 5 so this kinda of old news but this is the first I have seen some of these changes on the web.
posted by Jason Perry at 11:10 AM
6 Comments:
"These are channels on Titan that MAY carry liquid. They will be named after mythical or imaginary rivers."
Perfect!
I'd like to know what constitutes an "imaginary river". The Rillito River here in Tucson is an "imaginary river" and a flumina, for it is a channel that may carry liquid.
I vote for Styx...
We may want to save Inferno-related names for Io :-D
I have always liked the Tolkien idea. the plan was to use lakes and river (and now islands, though that's partly my fault) on Earth, but that goes against the IAU idea of not using the same name on different planets/satellites, particularly when they are the same type of feature. Mining a completely imaginary world for names seems like a sensable idea, but perhaps not enough time has passed since his work was published for place names and character names to be used.
These are channels on Titan that MAY carry liquid.
Are you referring to the channels in the Huygens images? If so, I thought the consensus was those were created by liquid. What else would create them?
this could include any channel-like feature seen by ISS, RADAR, or VIMS, not just Huygens.
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