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New names for Pluto's satellites

Posted: 21.06.2006, 20:02
by granthutchison
IAU Circular 8723 has just arrived, giving names for the new Plutonians.
Further to IAUC 8648, the IAU Working Group for Planetary
System Nomenclature has approved the following new designations and
names of satellites of Pluto:

Pluto II Nix = S/2005 P 2
Pluto III Hydra = S/2005 P 1

I've e-mailed an updated numberedmoons.ssc to Chris, since I still seem to be having trouble with CVS access, but in the meantime it's such a small change you'll probably just want to update by hand.

Grant

Posted: 21.06.2006, 20:19
by Dollan
Wow... I guessed one out of two correctly....

...John...

Posted: 21.06.2006, 20:25
by Malenfant
Nice to see there are still some cool mythical names remaining :)

Posted: 21.06.2006, 21:13
by granthutchison
"Nix" is a bit of a fudge, since it should be spelled "Nyx", the goddess of night, but apparently there's already an asteroid with that spelling.
The alternate spelling they've adopted means "snow" in Latin. But I suppose that's not inappropriate.

Grant

Posted: 21.06.2006, 21:16
by Dollan
Geez, now I feel dumb. I didn't even notice the spelling.... **chuckles** And I had no idea about the asteroid.

Nix, of course, was the one I had guessed....

Re: New names for Pluto's satellites

Posted: 22.06.2006, 19:10
by Jeam Tag
granthutchison wrote:IAU Circular 8723 has just arrived, giving names for the new Plutonians.
Further to IAUC 8648, the IAU Working Group for Planetary
System Nomenclature has approved the following new designations and
names of satellites of Pluto:
Pluto II Nix = S/2005 P 2
Pluto III Hydra = S/2005 P 1
Grant
Thx, Grant, When I've read this info from the Pluto Mission News today [quote]The names Nix and Hydra have been approved for the two small satellites of Pluto discovered in May 2005. The International Astronomical Union (IAU), the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies, approved the names this week.
A team of researchers from Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colo., the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Md., the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., used Hubble Space Telescope images to make the discovery in support of NASA?€™s New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt beyond.
?€?We?€™re very pleased with the decision of the IAU,?€

Posted: 22.06.2006, 19:15
by granthutchison
And you can decide for yourselves whether the choice of the names Nix and Hydra has anything to do with New Horizons.

Grant

Posted: 22.06.2006, 19:22
by Jeam Tag
granthutchison wrote:And you can decide for yourselves whether the choice of the names Nix and Hydra has anything to do with New Horizons.
Grant
Of Course :wink:

Posted: 23.06.2006, 10:52
by Fightspit
For me, N means Nitrogenize and H means Hydrogen .

Posted: 23.06.2006, 11:10
by ajtribick
...so what next? Youropa? Tytan?

Posted: 23.06.2006, 16:05
by symaski62
http://celestia.cvs.sourceforge.net/cel ... e&view=log

there are 2 months pluto and charon S/2005 P2, S/2005 P1.

veiled :wink:

@+

Posted: 24.06.2006, 09:06
by Fightspit
symaski62 wrote:http://celestia.cvs.sourceforge.net/celestia/celestia/extras/numberedmoons.ssc?sortby=date&view=log

there are 2 months pluto and charon S/2005 P2, S/2005 P1.

veiled :wink:

@+


Super :!: :!: :!:
You succeded to do your first sentence :!::!::!:

Posted: 02.07.2006, 08:10
by chris
I've committed Grant's update to numberedmoons.ssc that includes the new names for Pluto's satellites, as well as the nine new Saturnian satellites. You can download it from this page:

http://celestia.cvs.sourceforge.net/cel ... ortby=date

--Chris