The New Horizons team refers to a dark patch on Pluto's moon as 'Mordor'

published 15 July 2015

NASA on Wednesday unveiled its first close-up photos of the planet Pluto, as taken by the New Horizons probe. Among the many cool things we learned today — including that Pluto's equator is studded with icy mountains, and that Pluto has one of the youngest surfaces in the Solar System — is that the members of the New Horizons team refer to a dark patch near the north pole of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, as Mordor, famously the home of Sauron and Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings.

That is not the formal name of the region, according to The New York Times, though it is one of many possible names — including Tatooine and the Shire — that are reportedly under consideration for Charon's landmarks. Unlike Samwise Gamgee, who said Mordor was the one place we didn't want to see any closer, we're hoping in the coming days to get a more detailed look at that sinister-looking spot.