IAU Rejects name of Vulcan for Pluto moon

[Mysterion]

No doubt this will cause the IAu an endless number of sleepless nights.

I'll never cease fighting against IAU, even when they make the occasional right naming decision once in a while, such as this one!

Well, a few more enraged internet positings ought to turn them around.

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.

Greek spelling of Cerberus. Easy to confuse with the Orcs, though. One responsible for democracy, the other worked for Sauron to recapture the One Ring. Get them mixed-up al the time, myself.

Personally, the IAU made the right call here. Trekkies already jumped the gun with the space shuttle (and you what that got us). Wait for a new planet, then clammor for it be called Vulcan.

 

[iguana_tonante]

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.

We'll crack that when we find one. No biggies.

Dwarf planets, terrestrial planets, gas giants to me are all planets.

This, on the other hand, makes no sense. There is no "to me" here. Just a matter of consensus in the scientific community. You can claim that stars, cats, and verbs are all apples to you, and that would be equally meaningless.

 

[Christopher]

Oh, and while we are at it, Kerberos sounds like a deliberately obnoxious word made up by either Orcs or computer programmers...

No, it sounds like a Greek word that hasn't been Latinized. That's how it's supposed to be spelled. Well, except... in the Greek alphabet.

I'm still baffled by how many moons that are orbiting around something that's no longer considered a "planet".

Plenty of asteroids have moons. A moon is a satellite of another object; that object is not required to be a planet.

Now the whole "a dwarf planet is not a planet" is awkward, but oh well.

As I understand it, it's a collision of two separate proposals that don't mesh well. One proposal was for a subclass of planets that would be called dwarf planets; the other was for a class of non-planetary objects that would be called subplanets. Somehow the closed-door committee that slapped together a hasty compromise ended up taking a little from Column A and a little from Column B and ending up with a class of non-planetary objects called dwarf planets, which is conceptually, linguistically, and procedurally a mess. Although it certainly fits the classic definition of a compromise: an agreement that leaves both sides equally unhappy.

 

[iguana_tonante]

Having been in astrophysical committees, I have no troubles believing this.

 

[scotpens]

So, the moonlets Kerberos and Styx are orbiting the binary planetinos Plato and Charon.

Have you been to Planetino's? Great Italian food but a little pricey.