Names for Neptune's outer moons

[ajtribick]

Apparently the outer satellites of Neptune now have names:

2002N1 - Halimede
2002N2 - Sao
2002N3 - Laomedeia
2002N4 - Neso

http://www.iaa.es/IAUComm16/PS2_News00.pdf

[granthutchison]

Chris has checked in an update to numberedmoons.ssc for me, adding these names. Get it from the CVS tree at:

http://celestia.cvs.sourceforge.net/celestia/celestia/extras/numberedmoons.ssc

I'd suggest holding off on updating your numberedmoons.ssc file for a short while, however. The IAU have also just approved 13 new names for Saturnians (Aegir, Bebhionn, Bergelmir, Bestla, Farbauti, Fenrir, Fornjot, Hati, Hyrokkin, Kari, Loge, Skoll, Surtur), plus a new name for a Jovian (Kore). They're listed by the USGS here. I'm just waiting for the IAU circular to give me an official list of which temporary designation relates to which name, and I'll build a new update.

Grant

[ajtribick]

Cheers for the update!

The Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature lists those names, but doesn't list the temporary designations.

The numeric designations (e.g. Saturn XLIV = Hyrokkin) are listed however. Not sure if that's useful.

[granthutchison]

An updated version of numberedmoons.ssc is now available on the CVS tree, containing the new Jovian and Saturnian names from the IAU.

Grant

[LordFerret]

Will the updated SSC apply to the current release, or will it work with v1.4.1 also?

[granthutchison]

It'll work, all the new moon names will appear, but the Pluto-Charon system will look odd because of the changes Chris has made to the coordinate frame there in 1.5.0: Nix and Hydra will appear tilted out of alignment with the plane of the system.
If you prefer, I can post the temporary designations (as listed in numberedmoons.ssc) together with the new names, and you could make your own edits to a 1.4.1 compatible file.

Grant