Despite it winning their public poll, the IAU has decided against naming Pluto's moon Vulcan. Details here: http://www.theatlantic.com/technolo...ides-against-naming-pluto-moon-vulcan/277484/ Persnally, I am fine with this. The name needs to be saved for an actual planet. Anyhow, I had voted for Cerberus in the poll.
Good call. Mythologically speaking, it just doesn't work. Vulcan/Hephaestos was a fellow deity of Pluto/Hades, his nephew but otherwise pretty much an equal, and with a totally different area of specialization/reign. The name should probably be reserved for an exoplanet orbiting extremely near its star, if we ever get around to naming exoplanets. I voted for Orpheus and Eurydice. To me it seemed the obvious choice for naming a pair of moons. I guess most people disagreed.
I know I voted for Styx, figured if you have Pluto & Charon might as well have Styx for not only Charon to cross but so he could crank up The Grand Illusion during the ride.
Wasn't Vulcan another planet near the sun for awhile until they realized Vulcan and Mercury were the same planet?
Sort of, Vulcan was a planet that was hypothesized in the 19th century to exist between Mercury & the Sun to explain some oddities in Mercury's orbit.
^Right. Once Einstein formulated General Relativity, he determined those oddities in Mercury's orbit were relativistic effects of the Sun's mass and rotation, rather than the gravitational influence of an undiscovered planet. But the idea of a "planet Vulcan" was well-known by that point, and the name was used for alien planets in a number of different works of fiction, including Doctor Who and Star Trek. (Although Spock's homeworld was originally going to be called Vulcanis; a couple of references to his species being "Vulcanians" did get into the show. Vulcanis was eventually used as the name of the lunar colony where Tuvok was born.)
I'm glad they rejected Vulcan for an icy dwarf planet. It was naive of people to think that winning a poll would be enough to convince the IAU to name anything out there Vulcan. Why they even bothered with the poll was unclear to me. Did anyone really think they would simply accept a poll winner's name?
I still maintain that Pluto was promoted, not demoted. It went from the last and least member of the planet category to the first and foremost member of a whole new category of object, the harbinger of a whole new era of discovery -- as historically important to the Kuiper Belt as Ceres is to the Main Asteroid Belt. Essentially it's just been reassigned to a more appropriate weight class.
I think they made a good decision. If there are Trojans in the orbit of Mercury maybe then Vulcan might be appropriate.
I'd take the terminology hysteria a little bit further. It was never quite enough, and if IAU rejects Vulcan, I reject IAU. First, for consistency with their definition of a planet, those are not moons (they are space stations). Second, it is not a dwarf planet, it is a binary system of dwarf planets (denying it is political correctness gone wrong). Third, "dwarf planet" is making the English language cry, the correct term is really planetino. Please, stop ravaging English, it does not like it when you do it (except when it does). So, the moonlets Kerberos and Styx are orbiting the binary planetinos Plato and Charon. Plain and simple. I'll never cease fighting against IAU, even when they make the occasional right naming decision once in a while, such as this one! Oh, and while we are at it, Kerberos sounds like a deliberately obnoxious word made up by either Orcs or computer programmers, they should have gone with Persephone. Not enough female moons out there anyway.
Here's an expanded article from CNN, which includes some additional content, plus feedback from Shatner. It contains his particular brand of snark we've all grown to expect. I'm still baffled by how many moons that are orbiting around something that's no longer considered a "planet". DAMN YOU NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON!!!!
If Shatner is angry about it, there's no question it was a good decision. Now, speaking of rattling the cage, if there's an astronomical object to name Vulcan, it should be an asteroid belt formed from the remnants of a planet.
I didn't get the impression that he was terribly angry about it in the purest sense of the word; just the delivery of Sahara-dry humor that I think oftentimes gets misunderstood. I mean, here's what he said: That's not anger. That's pure Shatner snark.
You mean that for Pluto it's better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven? Kidding aside, I agree completely. Now the whole "a dwarf planet is not a planet" is awkward, but oh well.
Very awkward since it has been hinted that if a Mars sized object or larger were to be found in the Kuiper Belt it would get the tag dwarf planet. Dwarf planets, terrestrial planets, gas giants to me are all planets.