asterroc | Entries tagged with pluto

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Features on Pluto are being named after non-Western myths and characters from Western fantasy novels.

A large splotch that resembles a whale was named Cthulhu, a deity from a H. P. Lovecraft story. Other splotch names included Meng-Po, the goddess of forgetfulness in Chinese mythology; Balrog, a creature in J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” books; and Vucub Came and Hun Came, death gods of Mayan mythology. --NY Times, Kenneth Chang

On the one hand, I'm always happy when they go to non-Western myth. On the other hand, it feels disrespectful to put them on the same level as Western fantasy novels.

Discuss.

Originally posted on Dreamwidth.

comments there. Comment here or there.

Post copypasted from Tumblr b/c I'm just that excited.

OMFG I’m so excited! New Horizons flew by Pluto about 2.5 hours ago. It’s going to remain pointed at Pluto for another 5 hours or so to get as much data as possible, and then the craft is going to slew around and spit back all the images and other data to Earth, and then it’s going to take another 5 hours for the signal to get here.

Among the amazing discoveries so far, we already have that Pluto is larger than previously thought. We knew that Eris was the most massive Kuiper Belt Object - mass is easy to get when an object has moons, and Pluto has five (Charon, Nix, Hydra, Styx, Kerberos) and Eris one (Dysnomia).