Doom Mons

Doom Mons

Doom Mons with collapse featureSotra Pateraand flow featureMohini Fluctus,the latter partially covered bydunes.Radar image byCassini,2007
Feature type	Mountain, possible cryovolcano
Location	Aztlan,Titan
Coordinates	14°39′S40°25′W
Peak	1.45 km (0.90 mi) above the surrounding plains
Discoverer	Cassini
Eponym	Mount Doom, Middle-earth, fromJ. R. R. Tolkien's works

Doom Monsis the name of amountainrangeand its eponymous peak onTitan,the largestmoonofSaturn.A putativecryovolcano,it is the largest mountain range on Titan by volume. It was discovered by theCassini–Huygensprobein 2005 and officially named in 2012.

Naming

Doom Mons is named afterMount Doom,a volcano that appears inJ. R. R. Tolkien's fictional world ofMiddle-earth,most prominently inThe Lord of the Rings.The name followsa conventionby theIAU Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclaturethat Titanean mountains are named after mountains in Tolkien's works. Other examples of Titanean mountains or mountain rangesnamed after Tolkien's worksincludeErebor Mons,theIrensaga Montes,Mindolluin Montes,Misty Montes,Mithrim Montes,andTaniquetil Montes.The name of Mount Doom was formally announced for the Titanean mountain on November 13, 2012.

Location

Doom Mons is located in the Titan's southern hemisphere, between 14–15° south and 40–41° west.It is located within the Aztlandarklandsregion,possibly connected to the widerShangri-Ladark region, and is adjacent toSotra Patera,a possible cryovolcanic caldera 1.7 km (1.1 mi) deep.

Mohini Fluctus,a brightlobateflow feature at least 200 kilometers (120 mi) long, appears to emerge from Doom Mons and extends to the northeast. It is partially covered bydunes,including at its visible terminus, suggesting it is on the order of tens of meters thick.About 470 km (290 mi) to the north-northeast is situated another putative cryovolcanic feature,Erebor Mons,which is 40 km (25 mi) across, over 1 km (1,000 m; 0.62 mi; 3,300 ft) high, and has lobate flow features to its north and east.

Characteristics and height

From 2005, the findings of the Cassini–Huygens probe have revealed a largely smooth surface of Titan, with some notable abnormalities. Many Titanean "mountains" are little more than hills.However, some of these mountains rise to some several hundreds of meters high. Doom Mons is currently believed to be possibly the largest Titanean mountain range and with the eponymous peak one of the highest;the title of highest peak on Titan is thought to be held by theMithrim Montes,which may have been formed by global contraction.Doom Mons is believed to be a twin-peak that rises 1.45 km (0.90 mi) above the relatively flat surrounding plain, and a probable massivecryovolcano.It has a 500–600 m deep indentation on its western side, containing a circular pit that is another 400 m deep, while Sotra Patera is immediately to its east.

Doom Mons is constantly bombarded withwind, rain and snowcomposed of liquidmethaneandethane,hydrocarbon dust and organic smog and tholin haze; the summit of Doom Mons, however, appears to be mostly clear andice-cappedwithwater ice.The superficial features of Doom Mons are constantly changing, a fact which may be exacerbated by a sub-surface, briny ocean.The permanent hurricane at the southern pole of Titan probably causes an issue of constant erosion on Doom Mons, preventing the mountain from growing taller.Doom Mons is believed to have a total width about 60 km (37 mi).Robert Brown of theUniversity of Arizona,one of the controllers of the Cassini-Huygens probe, gave the following description of Doom Mons at the December 2006 meeting of theAmerican Geophysical UnioninSan Francisco,California:

"This mountain range is tall enough to produce streamers of clouds that extend far around the moon. You could call this the Titan Sierras. Several smaller ranges appear to be nearby, as does acircular featurethat might be the crater from an ancient asteroid impact powerful enough to have punched through Titan's outer crust. I speculate that the mountains might be a chain of volcanoes that oozed up along cracks in the crust after the impact. "

Fiction

Coincidentally, beforeThe Lord of the Ringswas published, a fictional mountain range of Titan already existed that carried the name "Mount Doom"; this was a major setting in the 1935 science-fiction taleFlight on TitanbyStanley G. Weinbaum.This was one of thelocationsin the Titan portion of Weinbaum's acclaimedPlanetary series.Weinbaum's Mount Doom was alternatively referred to in the tale as the "Mountains of Death", or "Mountains of The Damned"; it was populated by hostile native wildlife such as "Ice-Ants", "Whiplash Trees",pterodactyl-like "Knife-Kites", and thehypnosis-inducing "Giant Titanian Cave Threadworm". The climate of Weinbaum's mountain is described as sub-Arctic, and it is constantly battered by howling ice-needle storms and hurricane-force winds.