Girl who named ‘planet’ Pluto honoured with her own crater
A VAST crater on Pluto has been named after the 11-year-old English girl who suggested the Roman God when the planet was first discovered by Clyde Tombaugh in 1930.
Venetia Burney was having breakfast with her grandfather Falconer Madan, retired librarian at the Bodleian in Oxford, when he read a newspaper report suggesting the frozen planet was still nameless.
Venetia, who died in 2009, was fascinated by mythology. She told her grandfather that Pluto, the god of the underworld, was a perfect fit for such a dark, remote and frozen world.
The idea so impressed her grandfather that he mentioned it to Herbert Hall Turner, professor of astronomy at Oxford University, who immediately sent a telegram to the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, where Tombaugh agreed with the suggestion.
Pluto has since been downgraded to a dwarf planet, but it was photographed in detail by Nasa’s spacecraft New Horizons late in 2015, allowing geographical features to be seen for the first time.
Now 14 craters – including one newly-named Burney – mountains, depressions and ranges have been named by the Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature (WGPSN) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).
All the names pay homage to the underworld mythology, pioneering space missions, historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in exploration, and scientists and engineers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.
Tombaugh himself is remembered in a huge area of the southern hemisphere called Tombaugh Regio.
Two mountain ranges, Hillary Montes and Tenzing Montes, have been named in honour of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay who were the first to reach the summit of Everest and safely return.
A huge heart-shaped plain has been named Sputnik Planitia in honour of Sputnik 1, the first space satellite while Tartarus Dorsa is a ridge named for Tartarus, the deepest, darkest pit of the underworld in Greek mythology.
A deep depression has been named for Adlivun, the underworld in Inuit mythology.