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New Moon for Uranus
Spudley writes "With a headline that is just begging for puns, the BBC has a story about a new moon that has been discovered around Uranus. I wonder if this one will turn out to be a old rocket engine too?"
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"... it's a Space Station!"
According to the picture provided, this moon actually has its own set of rings. It's almost unbelievable!
There are several astro-databases, though the one I am most familar with is the MPC, which can be found at:
/. certainly has had enough articles on it.
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/mpc.html
IIRC, the ESA, NASA and other space agencies also have their own DBs for this information, though they usually propigate the information out once they have enough confirmed sightings.... that's the real rub, there are sooo many planetoids in the KB, the main belt and NEOrbits that nailing down orbits for these faint objects is *really* tricky.
Unfortunately I am not in a good area for any sort of observations. I hope the current window for the Extra-solar planet observation folks get enough volunteers,
--foolish
thanks for yr reply
:
:
i checked the page you referred to and i concede that it (and many more authorative references) indicate such a pronunciation
i am not a classics scholar, however several references to the proper pronunciation of Ouranus (the greek god of the sky) indicate the pronunciation i gave
firstly here is a good link to a page which gives the proper latin and old greek pronunciation of the entities whom the planets were named after
they give the latin pronuciation
VRANVS oor-AH-nuss
and the old greek pronunciation
OURANOS (Ouranos)
oar-AH-noss, oor-AH-noss
note that the last sylable changed from an 'o' sound to a 'u' sound, however the stressed middle vowel is an ah in both cases
one thing that i did not stress in my first post is that there should be no 'y' sound at the beginning of the word either
secondly here is a more scholarly page which shows the pronunciation of ouranos (search page for uranus, and page works best if you have proper greek fonts installed)
they indicate an IPA pronunciation of
[ura`nos]
so yes, in summary you could argue that the common modern pronunciation is correct even if it has changed from the way the ancient romans and greeks pronounced the word
however, i feel that it is an unfortunate pronunciation and i prefer the old one - i realise that there can never be a language police, nor would i welcome one, but i do feel that it is good for people to know that there is an alternative pronunciation to the common modern one which can sound better and is more in touch with the word's roots
i feel that the present situation arose from the fact that there was very little usage of the word for many centuries until it suddenly got shot back into prominence with the naming of a major planet after it - and unfortunately people pronounced it as they read it and not from hearing it
Just to toss in another good site, I'm very partial to:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/
As you can no doubt tell, it's maintained by JPL, so it has pretty much the best orbital and physical data around.