Dorothy Crater is the largest known impact basin on
Pluto
Pluto (minor-planet designation: 134340 Pluto) is a dwarf planet in the Kuiper belt, a ring of bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. It is the ninth-largest and tenth-most-massive known object to directly orbit the Sun. It is the largest ...
's moon
Charon. The
crater was discovered by the ''
New Horizons'' space probe in 2015 during its flyby of Pluto and its moons. It was named after
Dorothy Gale
Dorothy Gale is a fictional character created by American author L. Frank Baum as the protagonist in many of his ''Oz'' novels. She first appears in Baum's classic 1900 children's novel '' The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' and reappears in most of it ...
from the novel ''
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
''The Wonderful Wizard of Oz'' is a children's novel written by author L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow. It is the first novel in the Oz series of books. A Kansas farm girl named Dorothy ends up in the magical Land of Oz afte ...
''. The crater is located near Charon's north pole, and overlaps the edge of
Mordor Macula.
See also
*
List of geological features on Charon
The geological features of Charon (moon), Charon, the largest moon of Pluto, are being mapped by scientists using data from the ''New Horizons'' spacecraft. The team has given provisional names to the most prominent.
, only some of the names hav ...
*
Dorothy (Venusian crater)
Dorothy Crater is an impact crater on Venus.
The names for small craters on Venus (with a diameter less than ) are chosen from common female names. is a Greek first name, and the crater was officially designated by the IAU in 1997. The crater ...
References
Impact craters on Charon
New Horizons
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