Lagado Planitia, Phobos & Lagado Mews, Rotherhithe, London, UK
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Team Sieni
N 51° 30.275 W 000° 02.709
30U E 705063 N 5710078
Lagado Planitia is a plain on Phobos, named after the fictional city of that name from Jonathan Swift's book Gulliver's Travels, as is the street that is the site of this Waymark.
Waymark Code: WMDWQK
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 03/03/2012
Views: 5
Surely a plain on a moon of Mars is not named after this somewhat unpreposessing street in Rotherhithe? Well, not quite, but the truth is even more interesting.
Lagado is a planitia, or plain, on the surface of Phobos, the larger of Mars' two moons. It is one of several locations on Phobos named after people and places from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels.[1] It has been selected as the potential landing site for the Russian Phobos-Grunt Mission[2].
In the book Gulliver's Travels [3], Lagado was the capital of Balnibari. It was the home of the Grand Academy of Lagado in which scientists were engaged in bizarre experiments such as extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, in a satire on the Royal Society and scientific experimentation.
But what does this have to do with Rotherhithe? Well, Lemuel Gulliver's fictional home was in Redriff, the old name for Rotherhithe[4].
Because of the local significance of Gulliver, Lagado Mews is also named after the city of Lagado in the book. So both locations, one on Phobos, one in Rotherhithe are named after the same fictional city
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Wikipedia Phobos (moon)
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43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (2012) DAILY TEMPERATURE REGIME OF THE SURFICIAL REGOLITH OF PHOBOS IN THE LANDING
SITE REGION FOR THE PHOBOS-GRUNT MISSION LANDER IN DIFFERENT SEASONS: THE MODEL PREDICTIONS.
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Google Books Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
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Wikipedia Rotherhithe