More New Horizons Nomenclature Food Fights
Pluto, we have a problem: Some geographical names may not fly on official maps, GeekWire
“Some of the best-known names on Pluto ranging from the Sputnik plains to the Hillary and Norgay mountains and the dark Cthulhu Regio may never appear on the International Astronomical Union’s maps, due to a tiff over terminology. Those are just a few of the informal names that have raised questions from members of the IAU panel charged with approving the nomenclature for the dwarf planet’s geographical features. The names were selected by the team behind NASA’s New Horizons mission to Pluto after a months-long online naming campaign at OurPluto.org. “Frankly, we would have preferred that the New Horizons team had approached us before putting all these informal names everywhere,” said Rosaly Lopes, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who is a member of the IAU’s Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.”
Bolden Gets EPO Briefing From New Horizons Mission Team, earlier post
“Last week the SETI Institute unilaterally announced an effort whereby the public can suggest names for features discovered within the Pluto-Charon system. The IAU would have the final say as to which names were accepted. One small problem: NASA HQ was not in the loop for this major effort to name things discovered by a NASA spacecraft. It has been several days since SETI Institute made this announcement and there is no mention of this effort at the JHUAPL website, at the NASA mission website, at SwRI, or at NASA.gov. Only the personal Twitter account by the mission’s PI mentions this effort. This press release was not distributed by NASA, JHUAPL or SwRI. … Sources I have spoken with at NASA HQ said that NASA was not aware that this news was being announced or that SETI Institute had decided (seemingly on its own) to do this project on NASA’s behalf. Based on previous stunts it is quite clear that the New Horizons mission (again, a NASA mission paid for by NASA) has decided that it will make its own decisions on how the public will be involved – and that it is not up to NASA to coordinate these activities.”
– NASA Extends Campaign for Public to Name Features on Pluto, earlier post
– New Horizons Redefines Definition of “Planet” and “Moon”, earlier post
– Public Asked to Help Name Features on Pluto, earlier post
The IAU is already falling off the wagon concerning designation of supernovae. Although more supernovae are discovered every year, the IAU naming convention on supernovae is in line to confirm fewer supernovae in 2015 than in any year since 1987.
They also name features on moons and asteroids. And… whatever Pluto is, now.
Basically, if you’re seeing it through a telescope (or a spacecraft’s instruments), it’s astronomy and the IAU gets final say on confirming the names.
If you personally are standing there, at the hatch of your spaceship, it’s no longer astronomy, it’s
geographyselenographyareographymapping.Tradition. It served as a clearing house for recording discoveries to prevent disputes over firsts. Basically, when you discovered a new planet, moon, asteroid, comet, supernova, etc, you’d send a telegram (these days email) to the IAU which would confirm who was first. Having control over naming followed from that to avoid having dozens of separate, incompatible naming and coding systems. (Which still happened anyway.)
It may bother you now, but it saved us having Uranus named after King George. “Georgium Sidus”. Seriously, that was Herschel’s proposal.
(Just wished they’d picked the alternative spelling “Oranos” or “Ouranos” and saved us a lot of dumb jokes.)
(Hmmm, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Georgium, Leverrier, Brahma. “My Very Ernest Mother Just Said ‘Get Lost Bucko!'”?)
And the solar system would be much less humorous without Uranus.
For Pluto, the view never changes. 😉
Who appointed the IAU? Who cares what they have to say about this?
I’m serious. OurPluto has more democratic legitimacy than the IAU here. Kudos to the New Horizons team for running it. Now make the name selections easily downloadable in electronic format for mapmakers and let usage decide the controversial ones.
The IAU was formed in 1919, as a merger of several international groups that were dedicated to observing and mapping the solar system. The intent was to form a central authority to settle disputes over who discovered what, and to agree upon names and naming conventions for solar system objects, rather than having the confusion that naturally occurs when several competing groups are all making up their own things.
The IAU is still the central body to whom discoveries are reported and where names are decided upon. It’s comprised of over 12,000 astronomers from 73 member nations, each of whom have a Ph.D or better credentials and are actively involved in astronomical research or education. The IAU works closely with formal astronomical groups and institutions, as well as amateur astronomers from around the world.
Note that OurPluto does not dispute the authority of the IAU as the final say on names, and they are submitting the provisional names for approval.
http://www.ourpluto.org/faq…
Keep in mind that it is likely that many of the the provisional names that have been used so far will be adopted, and those that aren’t may still be used informally by the New Horizons team, much like the Curiosity Rover team still calls Aeolis Mons “Mt. Sharp.”
The current Pluto maps can be downloaded here:
http://www.ourpluto.org/maps
I am aware of the history of the IAU. You seem to have missed my point that nothing in that history grants them a coercive power to mandate naming of features on celestial bodies.
How are features on Earth named? By general convention. Someone sees a mountain, gives it a name, and either it becomes commonly used or not. Google and other map makers pull from many different sources for their data, and accept user-submitted data.
The situation in which one undemocratic, non-governmental organization without an obvious mandate acts as the definitive, authoritative clearing house on names is … bizarre. Unheard of in the historical record.
The OurPluto maps are PDFs. It would be much better if they provided geodatabase data in standard format.
Deciding upon names and establishing naming conventions for solar system objects is precisely one of the reasons it was formed.
There are far more features on Earth than any one governing body could assign unique names to; however, on much smaller scales, city councils often establish naming conventions for their city’s streets, and are much like the IAU in accepting petitions for the names of new streets, or for old street names to be changed, and so on.
Google isn’t the governing authority on names, either. If some user decided to rename Lake Tahoe “Pumpkin Lake” or whatever, even if everyone in the USA knew about it and called it that, it would still be Lake Tahoe. In the USA, the U.S. Board on Geographic Names is the authority on what mountains, rivers, lakes, etc. are called.
Central authorities on names are established precisely to avoid the chaos that would ensue if every state decided to call a mountain, river, or lake something different. Of course, there are examples where conflicts do exist, but they are few and far between.
The IAU is and has been long established as the governing body for naming celestial objects. A governmental organization would be the absolute worst thing for deciding the names of solar system objects. The IAU ensures that no one nation has that power. Its authority is decided by the consensus of its members, of which, as was mentioned earlier, there are over 12,000 from 73 nations around the world. It is a democratic body, which gathers together every 3 years and votes on various proposals that have been made in those past three years.
It has a 96 year historical record …
Who decides what format is “standard”?? Why should they not release their data in any format they choose?
Well, to judge by the number of places which have changed names in the past fifty years, I’m not sure I agree. Quite a few terrestrial places clearly had names which were externally imposed rather than the local consensus.
Also, since the IGY, names for places in Antarctica have been assigned by committee. That replaced the older system of naming by the discovered, and a number of proposed names have been rejected.
That said, the IAU should probably relax a little. Rejecting names because of duplication, or duplication of naming convention (e.g. no famous explorers’ names for Pluto, since that convention has already been used on Mercury or Venus) is pushing it. The better-mapped the solar system becomes, the more some duplication is inevitable. It isn’t as if there isn’t duplication of terrestrial names, and I haven’t noticed too much confusion between, for example, Orleans and New Orleans.
I’d also like to see more of a general tendency to go along with discoverer’s names (which is almost automatic for asteroids) and names that are easy to pronounce (which is, I realize, culturally dependent. But I’d say Kane’he’kil was a poor choice for a volcano on Io by that standard.)
“You can have a star named after someone…”. Where have I heard this before? 😉
“Pluto, I claim thee in the name of the IOU”. 😉