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Mordor Macula

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Mordor is the dark area
Mordor Macula is located at Charon's north pole.

Mordor /ˈmɔːrdɔːr/ is a large dark area about 475 km in diameter near the north pole of Charon, Pluto's largest moon.[1][2] It is named after the black land in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, which it strongly resembles in shape. The name is not official; the discovery team has been using the name informally and may submit it to the IAU.[3]

It is not currently known what Mordor is. It may be frozen gases captured from Pluto's escaping atmosphere, a large impact basin, or both.[4][5]

References

  1. ^ Nemiroff, Robert; Bonnell, Jerry (17 July 2015). "APOD: 2015 July 17 – Charon". Astronomy Picture of the Day. Retrieved 17 July 2015.
  2. ^ "NASA unveils historic, high-resolution Pluto, Charon, and Hydra photos from New Horizons mission". Extremetech.com. Retrieved July 15, 2015.
  3. ^ Charon Comes into Focus in New Horizons' Latest Photos, Article from Wired.
  4. ^ Nola Taylor Redd. "Mystery Solved? Why Pluto's Big Moon Charon Has a Red Pole". SPACE.com. Retrieved 30 July 2015.
  5. ^ Scott K. Johnson (September 14, 2016). "Millions of years for half a millimeter: Pluto puts red caps on Charon". Ars Technica. Retrieved 16 September 2016.


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