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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."
This was after Goofy and Minnie were rejected.
They originally wanted to name it Unix, but SCO threatened to sue.
One orbits around the other.
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.
to Pluto, maybe Cosmonaut Li can land on Nix.
Li nix - a good thing.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Could someone more familiar with greek mythology please tell me how Pluto and the Hydra are connected?
... Beneath the waters was an entrance to the Underworld, and the Hydra was its guardian (Kerenyi 1959, p. 143...)
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.
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.
Just to be clear:
"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:
Read more at Wikipedia: