Vote for the Informal Nickname of the Next Planet Four Target Region

Image credit: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_020716_0945 NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Thanks to your help, we’re nearly through all the Season 1 images of the regions informally nicknamed ‘Giza’ and ‘Ithaca’ on Planet Four. It means we’ll be moving on to another region of the south pole to complete its Season 1 observations. We’ve selected a region that has no internal nickname that we refer to it by. It has been captioned previously in public releases as ‘Possible Geyser Activity’ or ‘Geysers have been putatively spotted here.’ That’s quite a mouthful, and we use the informal names to talk about the region in blog posts and in discussions among the science team and on Talk. The previous nicknames we’ve used are ones inherited from the HiIRSE seasonal monitoring campaign, but here’s your chance to give input. Members of the Planet Four and Zooniverse teams have come up with nickname suggestions which you get to vote on (see below). Note – These names are all unofficial and not formal International Astronomical Union approved names for those regions on Mars. They’re informal and help us with the record keeping.

The site is located at -85.4 degrees N Latitude and 103.9 degrees East Longitude. You can get a sense of the area with this full frame HiRISE image. As most of the South Pole monitoring campaign nicknames are towns or cities or parts of cities on the Earth, we have decided to continue that theme for this region. Here’s the informal nicknames options you can vote for:

1. Potsdam – Suggested by Candy Hansen (Planet Four PI) – Generally the HiRISE seasonal polar monitoring campaign has used New York regions for the informal region names. (like ‘Ithaca’ and ‘Manhattan’). Postdam, USA is in the state of New York, and I have a friend that grew up there.

2. Wellington – Suggested by John Keegan (Planet Four Talk Moderator) – Known as the windiest and most southerly capital city in the world. It has an annual average windspeed around 16 knots/hr (18 miles/hr). Wellington is located in what is known as a River of Wind, between the South and North Islands of New Zealand.

3. Chicago – Suggested by Andy Martin (Planet Four Talk Moderator) – The windy city, Chicago, USA because of the number of wind directions we see.

4. Oxford – Suggested by Grant Miller (Zooniverse Communications Lead) – Oxford, UK is the birthplace and home town of the Zooniverse and therefore in turn the Planet Four project.

5. Calistoga – Suggested by Michael Parrish (Zooniverse developer who built Planet Four Talk ) – Calistoga, USA is the home of “Little Old Faithful” (also known as the Old Faithful of California). artificial geyser/erupting geothermal well

6. Macclesfield – Suggested by Meg Schwamb (Planet Four Scientist) – Planet Four launched at BBC Stargazing Live in 2013 at Jodrell Bank. Macclesfield, UK is the name of the town the telescope is on the outskirts of.

Vote by March 15th.

**Note** – This vote is to help select the nickname for a region on the south pole of Mars. This is unofficial and not a formal International Astronomical Union approved naming process for this region on Mars. The name is informal and helps us with the record keeping only.

6 responses to “Vote for the Informal Nickname of the Next Planet Four Target Region”

Christine (Skyrho ) says : March 1, 2016 at 2:41 pm
Have you considered Yellowstone?

- Meg says : March 1, 2016 at 2:42 pm
  Yellowstone isn’t a town or city. There is East (and I think a West Yellowstone). Maybe we can use that in a subsequent region in name of a proper informal nickname on Planet Four.
  
  Cheers,
  
  ~Meg
  
- Don Faxon says : March 7, 2016 at 7:26 pm
  This is also my question as well, and what came to mind first. But sticking to the choices provided, Wellington is not only windy, but conjurs up the mystique associated with the JRR Tolkien’s trilogy where the LOTR movie was made.
  Toodles, df
  
Dr Geoff morley says : March 7, 2016 at 4:33 pm
Southern limits Indispensable Mars (SLIM)

G Shearwater says : March 8, 2016 at 11:24 pm
I’d like to suggest raising awareness of lesser-known places on Earth. Since we’re at the south pole on Mars, I suggest
>>> IFRANE (Morocco) <<<
with the coldest recorded temperature in Africa (and snow). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ifrane
If we have to go with the list above, my vote is
MACCLESFIELD for its overall significance, and because it's doing what ZOO does: trying to make space sciences better knows to the public.