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Pluto's New Moons Named Nix and Hydra

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the nice-kitten-names-too dept.

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."

24 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Compromise by tekisama · · Score: 5, Funny

    This was after Goofy and Minnie were rejected.

  2. Must remember not to holiday there. by celardore · · Score: 3, Funny

    Moons named after the ferryman of the dead's mothers place, and a "fierce nine-headed monster" doesn't sound like a good place to be! I'll probably never pass through there on my way though, it's not on my route.

    1. Re:Must remember not to holiday there. by tekisama · · Score: 4, Funny

      As if the temperatures below 50 Kelvins wasn't a deterrent. Besides, one is only like 40 miles across. Enough space for an Arco station and a Starbucks.

    2. Re:Must remember not to holiday there. by Red+Flayer · · Score: 4, Funny
      Besides, one is only like 40 miles across. Enough space for an Arco station and a Starbucks.
      Where have you been? 40 miles is enough space for at least 80 Starbucks. More if you've got a mall on the moon.
      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
  3. So when they nix the next Pluto mission... by jd · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...the're really meaning it'll go to the moon instead?

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  4. what about bob? by blinder · · Score: 3, Funny

    no really!
    bob. yeah, not as catchy if the entire planet were called "bob" but still!

    bob the moon.

    --
    sad robot making broken music
  5. Pluto? Hydra? by Jhan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Could someone more familiar with greek mythology please tell me how Pluto and the Hydra are connected?

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    1. Re:Pluto? Hydra? by eln · · Score: 5, Funny

      One orbits around the other.

    2. Re:Pluto? Hydra? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Could someone more familiar with greek mythology please tell me how Pluto and the Hydra are connected?

      First off, Pluto is the Roman god of the underworld (the Greek was Hades).

      Secondly, from wikipedia:

      Its lair was the lake of Lerna in the Argolid. ... Beneath the waters was an entrance to the Underworld, and the Hydra was its guardian (Kerenyi 1959, p. 143...)

    3. Re:Pluto? Hydra? by uberjoe · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not to nitpick too much, but they actually orbit a barycenter, or common center of gravity.

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    4. Re:Pluto? Hydra? by tbakker · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hydra guarded the entrance to the Underworld that was under lake Lerna.

  6. They expecting mucho agua? by ZSpade · · Score: 4, Informative

    They named both of these moons after mythical creatures that had almost everything to do with water. the Nix and the Multiple headed Hydra to which we owe many of our roots in the english language for water, I am assuming.

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  7. Unix by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Funny

    They originally wanted to name it Unix, but SCO threatened to sue.

  8. Must. Resist. Setup. by Quiet_Desperation · · Score: 3, Funny
    I have a hydra in my lap, and it ain't a computer.

    (rimshot)

    Thank you!

  9. Oh, you mean hydra. by AltGrendel · · Score: 4, Funny
    I thought you wrote "Hydrant"

    Pluto could use a hydrant.

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    - Douglas Adams

  10. New Horizons by Dr.+Eggman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:New Horizons by Don853 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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?

      Probably not, the new moons don't have very much mass anyway, and Pluto's planethood is questioned as much by its eccentric orbit and its resemblence to Kuiper belt objects as by its mass.

  11. When the Chinese Moon Missions sends a rocket by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 5, Funny

    to Pluto, maybe Cosmonaut Li can land on Nix.

    Li nix - a good thing.

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  12. The moon by jbeaupre · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

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    1. Re:The moon by Jboost · · Score: 5, Informative

      Really, I thought the Moon was called Luna.
      We call it 'the' moon because it is 'our moon', just like we call Sol 'our Sun' and Terra 'the Earth'.

      It's easier that way.

    2. Re:The moon by kodeman · · Score: 5, Informative

      Just to be clear:

      • Our planet is officially named "Earth".
      • Our moon is officially named "Moon".

      "Terra" is generic "ground" in Latin. During the height of this word's popular usage, no distinction was made between the ground and the surface of the planet itself, just as we sometimes refer to soil as "earth".

      "Luna" is generic "moon" in Latin. During the height of this word's popular usage, no distinction was made between the moon orbiting our planet and a moon orbiting any other body in space, since only our one moon was conclusively known to exist.

      Other variants for "Earth" are "Tellur" (ancient Latin form of modern Latin derivitive "Terra") and "Gaia" (Greek). Another variant for "The Moon" is "Selene" (Greek).

      The significance of English vs. Latin names:

      English is very prevalent in modern technical/scientific disciplines due to its articulative flexibility through use of the root/prefix/suffix language construction derived from its Romantic/Latin heritage. Since Latin proper has mostly been replaced in the western world by Romantic language variants and dialects, English has become the language of much normative information in scientific circles. The reason is simple: articulative ability in a commonspeak language.

      However, as in medicine, Latin is used as a disambiguation language. That is, one which contrasts sharply with commonspeak so as to instantly confer information without the ambiguities introduced by commonspeak language, such as homonyms or figures of speech. Hence, in scientific documentation, such as astronomical data, Latin designations are used to disambiguate the meaning of things, like planet names and moons, while providing a clear base for universally translating the correct meaning to other languages as needed for native language comprehension.

      Interesting sidenotes:

      • Luna, root word for common word "lunatic" - one who is crazed due to the influence of our planet's moon
      • Terra, phrase root for common phrase "Terra Firma" - solid ground

      Read more at Wikipedia:

  13. Re:Why Not Cerberus? by Valdrax · · Score: 3, Informative

    Cerberus is already in use as an asteroid.
    I'm not sure whether or not that has any bearing on the naming of planets and moons, but at least Hydra's better than Quaoar.

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  14. Re:But... by Hannah+E.+Davis · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's an asteroid with a moon (Ida/Dactyl, as I recall), so I don't know why Pluto would have a problem :) A moon is really just a small thing orbiting a big thing, after all, and it doesn't matter whether the big thing is a planet it or not.

  15. More to come... by posterlogo · · Score: 4, Informative

    These moons, and those newly discovered ones around Saturn obviously did not just come into existence in recent history, we merely detected them finally, and gave them names. To extrapolate, there will be many more that we haven't detected yet, most likely around the last three: Uranus, Neptune, Pluto, simply because detailed analysis by dedicated spacecraft hasn't been done yet. I think the Voyagers did a fairly thorough job, though, so whatever is left should be quite small, but may merit the classification of "moon" none-the-less (not sure what the criteria is...Saturn has billions of "moonlets" in its rings).


    This sort of begs the question, how many names are we gonna have to come up with. Surely Classical mythology has a finite supply...