People like naming things. During the day we name everything the sun touches - and at night we name the stars.

We named the bright star in the morning and the bright star in the evening. We realised they were the same thing. We named the fire-red star and the other strange ones that move around the sky. The wanderers. The planets.

As telescopes improved we could see more than oddly coloured points of light - we could see moons slowly turning around them. And we could see features, plains of shade, imagined oceans, mythical canals.

And we started to name those too.

This is a website about those names - our words for places no one has ever been, and where no one may ever go.

Learn more about this site or check out our Moon Rover.


Start exploring at Mercury - or click any world below:

Mercury (474) (map)
Venus (1973) (map)
Moon (9011) (map)
Itokawa (17)
Eros (41)
Mars (1798) (map)
Phobos (20) (map)
Deimos (2)
Gaspra (34)
Ceres (81) (map)
Steins (24)
Ida (25)
Dactyl (2)
Vesta (106) (map)
Lutetia (37)
Mathilde (23)
Amalthea (4)
Thebe (1)
Io (224) (map)
Europa (111) (map)
Ganymede (194) (map)
Callisto (153) (map)
Janus (4)
Epimetheus (2)
Mimas (42)
Enceladus (85) (map)
Tethys (53) (map)
Dione (93)
Rhea (143) (map)
Titan (194) (map)
Hyperion (5)
Iapetus (70)
Phoebe (25)
Puck (3)
Miranda (18)
Ariel (26)
Umbriel (13)
Titania (18)
Oberon (10)
Proteus (1)
Triton (61)
Pluto (0)
Charon (0)

Built by Inkleby based on data from the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature.
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