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Mordor Macula is the informal name for a large red area about in diameter near the north pole of Charon,
Mordor Macula is the informal name for a large red area about in diameter near the north pole of Charon, 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 largest moon. It is named after the black land called Mordor
In J. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth, Mordor (pronounced ; from Sindarin ''Black Land'' and Quenya ''Land of Shadow'') is the realm and base of the evil Sauron. It lay to the east of Gondor and the great river Anduin, an ...
in J.R.R. Tolkien's ''The Lord of the Rings
''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's b ...
''.
Origin
The origin of Mordor Macula is not completely understood. It may be a deposit of frozen gases captured fromPluto
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 escaping atmosphere, a large impact basin, or both. A leading hypothesis is that nitrogen and methane escape from Pluto and are then deposited into the cold poles of Charon, where scattered ultraviolet light then transforms the molecules into tholin
Tholins (after the Greek (') "hazy" or "muddy"; from the ancient Greek word meaning "sepia ink") are a wide variety of organic compounds formed by solar ultraviolet or cosmic ray irradiation of simple carbon-containing compounds such as carbon ...
s. This hypothesis implies that a similar red spot should exist on Charon's south pole as welland indirect evidence suggests this is true.
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 ...
References
Surface features of Charon Extraterrestrial surface features named for Middle-earth {{Planetary-science-stub