http://planetarynames.wr.usgs.gov/jsp/Feat...t&show=Orig

A host of new feature names have been approved for use on Dione. For example, the large impact basin on Dione shall hence forth be known as Evander.

Here is it mappified (map by Steve Albers). I think I got all the ones that got changed from the original proposal, but let me know if you see any mistakes.

Thanks, VP!

Silly question: What are the precise distinctions made between chasma, dorsa, and fossae? I know that the USGS has a site somewhere for this, but haven't been able to locate it.

Dorsum (pl. dorsa) - a ridge

Fossa (pl. fossae) - a valley (trough, graben)

Chasma (pl. chasmata) - a canyon or very large rift, like the individual components of Valles Marineris on Mars.

Phil

Thanks, Phil. I seem to have a perspective reversal problem with dorsa... ...been a long time since I went to the optometrist.

The Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature is what you're looking for. Specifically, the Descriptor Terms page.

Thanks for the tip, VP!

Scrolling down the home page I saw a list of news and followed the link to More News and discovered that the USGS has an RSS feed for new names and name changes! Awesome.

--Emily

Have to admit I'm a real sucker for new maps like this. Something about a map with names on makes a place seem more, well, real to me, you know? It means "we've been here, we've studied this place, and gave names to what we found and saw because we're coming back one day...". Quite moving, in a starry-eyed, unashamed romantic, yer great soft nit kind of way...

Really Great, thanks a lot Jason. I was waiting for these names since a long time.
I really like maps of solar system bodies, and Steve Albers maps are really fantastic. And with names, it's even better.
A lot of new names to learn and an occasion to study in closer detail the Aeneid.
I just would have called the big basin Virgil (as well as I think Homer deserves to have his name somewhere on Tethys).
Marc.

So - it's Evander that I've been hammering on recently to try and show its periphery

Nice labelifying - VP!

You might want to read Oliver Morton's 'Mapping Mars' that describes that very process/effect over the years
for that world.

Is it coincidence that Evander looks like an ear that's had a bit chewed off it

Thanks for the recommendation Ralph, but that's one of my favourite books already. It's helped inspire several of my poems.

A dorsum is literally a "back", the side of a human or other vertebrate along which the spine runs. Hence the biological term "dorsal" as opposed to "ventral" -- spine-side as opposed to stomach-side, e.g. used of a shark's "dorsal fin".

Already in Latin the term was used for the ridge of a hill, just as in English we speak of a "hogback" of land.