PASADENA -- As scientists studied the pictures from Mars sent back by the Pathfinder lander and Sojourner rover, the world heard some surprisingly down-to-earth names: Stimpy, Yogi and Scooby Doo.
These impromptu monikers, derived from popular cartoon characters, gave scientists an easy way to identify rocks at Pathfinder's landing site. But most of the time, to those who name features on Mars and other extraterrestrial bodies, the "name game" is serious business.
The International Astronomical Union, a 90-year-old group, is the lone worldwide authority on naming celestial bodies and the features that distinguish them. Their naming conventions are brimming with formal rules and strict guidelines, with a healthy dollop of Latin and Greek thrown in for good measure.
For Mars, named for the Roman god of war, features fall into up into five broad categories:
-- Large craters, named for now-dead scientists who studied Mars or for writers and others who added to the considerable wealth of legends and lore that have sprung up around the planet. Examples include Galilei for the Italian astronomer and Roddenberry for the American television producer of Star Trek fame;
-- Small craters, named for world cities with populations smaller than 100,000. Examples include the Peruvian town of Nazca, known for its mysterious linear markings, and Kalingrad, mission control site for Russian space missions;
-- Large valleys, or valles, named for "Mars" or "star" in various languages. Examples include Dao, Thai for "star," and Ma'adim, the word for "Mars" in Hebrew.
-- Small valleys, named for the modern or classical names for world rivers. Examples include Warrego, an Australian river and Padus, the Latin name for the Po River in Italy.
-- Other features, named for the nearest light or dark marking shown on maps of Mars made by 19th century European astronomers. Examples include Olympia Planitia, or "plain of Olympia," for the ancient Greek city, and Xanthe Terra, Greek and Latin meaning "golden-yellow land."
Mars two moons, Phobos and Deimos -- Greek for "fear" and "terror" -- are named for the horses that drew Mars chariot in ancient mythology. Features on Deimos are named for authors who wrote about the planets two satellites. On Phobos, features are named for scientists who studied them.
One example is Stickney, an impact crater on Phobos named for Chloe Angeline Stickney, the wife (and former college mathematics professor) of American astronomer Asaph Hall, who discovered both martian moons in 1877.
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