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New Moons of Pluto Named Kerberos and Styx; Popular Choice 'Vulcan' Snubbed
MarkWhittington writes "The International Astronomical Union announced on July 2, 2013 its picks to name the two recently discovered moons of Pluto, hitherto known as P4 and P5. They will now be known as Kerberos and Styx respectively. In Greek and Roman mythology Kerberos is the name of the mythological three headed hound that guards the entrance to the underworld. Styx is the name of the river that separated the underworld from the real world. The names, picked in a popular contest, were actually the second and third choices. The first choice was Vulcan, which was officially touted because it was the name of a Roman god who was a relative of Pluto's and was associated with fire and smoke. The real reason that Vulcan shot up to the top of the list was that was a choice by Star Trek fans in a campaign instigated by actor William Shatner, who played Captain James Kirk in the original series."
Shatner is sad and may lead a revolt. Phil Plait wins the award for best headline for this news.
Why must you be such an angry young man?
Thankfully real space programs prefer to operate with a shred of dignity and class. Next thing you know we would have demands to name a moon somewhere after a character from Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
P4 should obviously have been named "FDIV" and P5 should have been "Core Solo".
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I am glad to finally see Styx get the recognition they deserve. I can't believe took this long though.
That's no moon, that's a [ FRANCHISE ERROR DETECTED - Resetting]
I'm assuming that I shouldn't come to you with my "They should have named them 'Kerberos' and 'LDAP'" suggestion?
At first I thought this read "So sick of popular _greek_ culture", to which I'd agree. If we're going to draw from mythological names for astronomy, there are plenty to choose from beyond the typical Roman & Greek ones, both modern and ancient.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kang.
rewriting history since 2109
So if your system clock is off by more than 5 minutes, does Kerberos disappear?
Post anonymously - For when your opinion embarrasses even you!
1. I agree with the name choices because they make sense...
However...
2. What is the point of having a contest if you're not going to pick the winner?
They should not hold a naming contest if they're just going to pick the names they want anyway.
Proverbs 21:19
Vulcan is Hephaistos, the god of the forge. He has fiery, volcanic imagery, which is why when some astronomers suspected that there might be a planet closer to the Sun than Mercury, Vulcan was the proposed name. Really, Trek fans, a tiny icy moon of Pluto's was not the place to name after Vulcan, no matter how much we like Spock.
Indeed. We could call it Jesus.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Vulcan was rejected because it shared its name with a hypothetical planet inside the orbit of Mercury, and also because, as god of the forge, Vulcan had little connection to the icy moons of Pluto.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Shatner is sad
Quote of the day.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
So what? The names used for celestial bodies all come from somewhere, we're all sick of millennia-old references from Greek culture.
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No let's keep the Greek culture references. The next two moons discovered should be named Taxfraud and Bankruptcy.
What ever we earthlings call them now they'll have to be renamed later when we discover the name the natives use for their own world. Post colonialism rules!
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
I'm surprised he didn't get in on this to further tie his horrendous Star Trek movies to something else (as if Cadillacs, Asus notebooks, Burger king, Pepsi, and some kind of Watch weren't enough)....
Although, according to Abram's "canon"; Vulcan has an icy (but habitable) moon, which is the only way Old Spock and Young Kirk could have witnessed the destruction of Vulcan.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
So what? The names used for celestial bodies all come from somewhere, we're all sick of millennia-old references from Greek culture.
The Uranian system doesn't have Greek names - Oberon, Titania, Ariel, Umbriel, Puck, Miranda...
And, of course, the Tellurian system doesn't either.
They should rename Pluto to Hades, mixing up mythologies makes me feel like Papa Legba when Baldr was killed by Anansi.
Someone had Too Much Time On [Their] Hands
Thank you for explaining who William Shatner is. I'm sure there are still a good 5 or 6 Slashdot readers who are still unaware.
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/\ This.
I've always read the 3 headed dog's name as Cerberus.
Or, "Fluffy", from Harry Potter, if you prefer. In hindsight, I think I'll refer to these moons as Styx and Fluffy.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
serious question...
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Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
It will be in another solar system, in this one there isn't a single planet with intelligent life yet.
We don't need to mention it to you, as everything one would want to know about that absolutely wonderful television program can be easily found here.
You're welcome.
Bazinga.
Can't wait till USA announces an expedition to the outer solar system to hack Kerberos.
Seems like that's a critical part of this story and the reason is not mentioned.
What about calling it Fluffy? I'm sure a lot more people know of Fluffy, the three headed dog than Kerberos, the three headed dog.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
No, Jesus should clearly become the name of an Asteroid. One that has the chance to once get to earth and terminate life. Then even atheists can talk about how Jesus will come to the world and end it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
So you say the dolphins aren't intelligent?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
That it wasn't named Yuggoth
Oh, and can't we keep it Roman in this Solar System? We still need the Greek names for the next system.
They are still here, after all.
We don't need to mention it to you, as everything one would want to know about that formulaic sitcom with hamfisted geek culture references can be easily found here.
You're welcome.
FTFY.
There's already an asteroid called Cerberus.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Cerberus is the Latin spelling: Kerberos is a transliteration of the Greek.
Really isn't a name for just a moon but for a whole planet. That's my opinion. Seems logical.
You can dance if you want to.
I can find no reference to Kerberos being an alternate spelling for Cerberus.
here you go. bow to your finnish overlords! (or ancient greeKs who spelt it with K..)
http://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Fuck off then.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
You must not be looking very hard. Link
Everything is better with chainsaws.
Im [pause] mad [pause] Scotty [pause] fire up the warp engines [pause] Uhura hail the IAU [pause] Starfleet [pause] anybody. Well get [pause] a landing party and beam [pause] over [pause] and fix [pause] this.
Silence is a state of mime.
When translating it to english, why not just spell it like it sounds, or as close as we can get to it, instead of calling it something that sounds completely different?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It coud've been worse. At least it wasn't 'Kansas' and 'REO Speedwagon'.
Speaking of 80's rock, even worse would be a moon named 'Europe'. Oh wait...!
Because people won't mangle the pronunciation of "Germany" as often or as badly as the might mangle "Deutschland" for instance. This is why I still say "Burma" instead of "Myanmar". As far as I'm concerned, it's the English word for Myanmar. And if you disagree, I expect you to start calling Sweden "Sverige" immediately.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
That would be a nice name for a set of moons, lol.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Well according to the reboot there isn't a planet Vulcan anymore, so it seems appropriate that there isn't a moon Vulcan either...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
The Uranian system doesn't have Greek names - Oberon, Titania, Ariel, Umbriel, Puck, Miranda...
I heard Miranda had some sort of terraforming accident, but is pretty quiet now.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
That same with you Big Bang losers. I don't give a crap about your stinking show. Don't mention it to me. I don't want to know anymore about it.
That's weird, the only person I can see mentioning it right now is you, so...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I never suggested I would disagree with specific examples where it doesn't appear to apply, but much more often than not, the name of something in anything other than its original language bears much more than just a passing resemblance to its pronunciation in the original, and when significant variations do exist, they are often still more a consequence of different phonetic structures between two languages than simply a new name assigned to it (your example of Sweden illustrates this, and is a fair Anglicization of how they pronounce the name of their own country). The name we have for places like Germany is an example of something else entirely... and shouldn't be taken to be the general rule when translating names (in fact, Germany is technically not a translation at all, but a unique word derived from a word that the ancient Romans used for them which, if I remember correctly, meant something similar to "neighbor". The word would come to refer to the name of their country amongst the Romans long before it became common knowledge that they called their own homeland something else entirely).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I heard Miranda had some sort of terraforming accident, but is pretty quiet now.
Of course it is. It has the right to remain silent.
Jesus is a pretty common hispanic name. You might as well open up the big book of baby names and go to town...
I'm off to planet "Steve"...
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Vulcan was rejected because it shared its name with a hypothetical planet inside the orbit of Mercury, and also because, as god of the forge, Vulcan had little connection to the icy moons of Pluto.
You are correct. The choice of Vulcan for a name was highly illogical.
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
I'd be fine if they just reserved the name for any planet in the Eridanus systems.
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Speaking of 80's rock, even worse would be a moon named 'Europe'. Oh wait...!
You definitely want to attempt no landing there!
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Hey, hold on there, this is a pretty exclusive place.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Does it really matter if the names of the moons follow any kind of guidelines considering the fact that the planet (or dwarf planet, or whatever you want to call it) was named after a cartoon dog?
Vulcan was never going to be chosen and these 2 have a good association to each other.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3497407&cid=43020767
They didn't want to piss off the Vulcans
What's the RADIUS of Kerberos?
So people invent names, and astronomers have traditions for naming solar system objects, so to name the moons for mythological cohorts of the Roman God Pluto is conventional. Vulcan is far more removed from the convention and some newer even fashionable idea was probably rejected because it doesn't fit the tradition, and as it is the AIU that makes the agreements between astronomers. If you are really incensed you can use Pluto I, II, III, IV, etc.
You are the "they". Or at least, you could be if you go and do the work to be recognised in the exoplanet-hunting community ass being the prime expert on any exoplanetary system in Eridanus. Of which there are 29 candidates out of about 87 naked-eye stars. Were you thinking particularly of Epsilon Eridani, this being the closest to us?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Enough said.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"