Slashdot Mirror
Pluto's New Moons Named Nix and Hydra
Dean W, Armstrong writes "Pluto's two new satellites, previously identified as S/2005 P 2 and S/2005 P 1, received official names from the International Astronomical Union today. Nix and Hydra are named after the mother of Charon and the fierce nine-headed monster. The initials of the new names, N and H, call to mind the New Horizons spacecraft, on a fast trajectory to visit Pluto, just like Pluto's symbol calls to mind Percival Lowell."
Could someone more familiar with greek mythology please tell me how Pluto and the Hydra are connected?
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
I for one can't wait for this craft to make it to Pluto. There's so much we don't know about that area of the solar system and even a fly-by mission could tell us so much. Wouldn't it be grand if we could pin down chemical makeups of pluto and other objects in the Kuiper Belt? We might get a better idea if the Deuterium and Protium Isotope proportions are dissimilar to the Earth's Ocean Water and help decided whether comets like Halley and Hyakutake are good represent sample (if they are, they're easier to study than the rest of the Belt.) What if we discovered that the ratio is closer to Earth's Ocean than the comet's have provided? It could lend quite a bit of credence to theoretical origins of atleast some of Earth's water as being Extraterrestrial! Who knows what other clues Pluto and its moons may hide about the origin and growth of the solar system. I wonder if these new moons plus Pluto and Charon would be massive enough (as one) to be above the controversy over Pluto's planethood?
Demented But Determined.
So much effort to name rocks billions of miles away and yet our closest neighbor just gets called "moon." ok, "the moon." Well, you always take the familiar for granted.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.