NASA on Wednesday unveiled its first close-up photos of the planet Pluto, as taken by the New Horizons probe. Among the many cool things we learned today — including that Pluto's equator is studded with icy mountains, and that Pluto has one of the youngest surfaces in the Solar System — is that the members of the New Horizons team refer to a dark patch near the north pole of Pluto's moon, Charon, as Mordor, famously the home of Sauron and Mount Doom in The Lord of the Rings. (Text added, photo courtesy NASA.gov) That is not the formal name of the region, according to The New York Times, though it is one of many possible names — including Tatooine and the Shire — that are reportedly under consideration for Charon's landmarks.