News Names for Pluto moons P4 and P5

[Topper]

Welcome to Kerberos (P4) and Styx (P5)

 

[C3PO]

What? Not Kerbin? :rofl:

 

[Belisarius]

Background from Phil Plait

...Hubble observations unveiled two more moons in 2005, which were named Nyx and Hydra. A fourth moon, provisionally named P4, was found in 2011 and then P5 in 2012.

Get the trend? All the moons are named after characters associated with the Roman god of Pluto, god of the underworld Hades. Charon was the riverboat driver who brought the dead to Hades. Nix is named after Nyx, the goddess of the night, sometimes depicted as a mist that comes from the underworld (the name is spelled with an “i” to avoid confusion with an asteroid with that name). Hydra was a nine-headed dragon that lived in a cave near the entrance to the underworld (and the nine heads were a sly reference to Pluto being the ninth planet).

Kerberos is the name of the three-headed dog guarding the underworld, usually spelled Cerberus (but again, this name was already taken by an asteroid). Styx was the river separating the underworld from the realm of mortals, and also a 1970s rock band. That last bit may be coincidence.

 

[MattBaker]

Glad they haven't gone through with the Vulcan stuff and named them properly...

 

[dgatsoulis]

The trend? Planets get the names of the roman gods (which are the Greek dodecatheon in latin) and moons get the Greek related-to-the-god names.

(Except Uranus, which was named... George for a few decades, after the king of England). In that case the moons of... George where named after shakespearean characters.

Whatever happened to Melinoë (Greek: Μηλινόη)? Her cold heart (an epithet for Hecate) would be appropriate for a cold moon.

Also, the terms in which Melinoë is described are typical of moon goddesses in Greek poetry.

Oh well... I guess a three-headed dog is "cooler". (pun intended)