Now that
the initial excitement over the finding of a new moon orbiting Neptune has
subsided, astronomers can get to the fun business of giving the distant moon a
name more interesting than S/2004 N 1. As the 14th orbiting body to be added to
the cache of Neptunian moons, the satellite will eventually be named after a
character in Greek or Roman mythology, specifically one that has something do
to with water, as Neptune is the Roman god of the sea. (Poseidon, the Greek god
of the sea, holds equal weight in the naming process.) Mark Showalter,
the astronomer and senior researcher at the SETI Institute credited with
discovering the new moon, will get the final say in naming the new moon -
though he may be open to suggestions. Showalter also discovered the two most recently named moons of Pluto,
and instead of picking names for them himself, he opted to crowdsource the
naming process. After collecting the top suggestions for new Plutonian moon
names - all of which had to relate to the mythical underworld - Showalter held
an online poll to choose the winning names. The winners were Keroberos, named
after the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to Hades, and Styx, which
is the river that separates the underworld from Earth and also the name of the
goddess of the river. (The name Vulcan was the top contender, but was ruled out
because it makes no reference to the mythical underworld.) It's still undecided
whether a similar online effort to name the new Neptune moon will happen. Showalter
told PBS he's keen on the name Polyphemus, referring to the Cyclops -- son of
Thoosa, a mythical sea nymth, and Poseidon, the Greek sea god. In Homer's epic
poem the Odyssey, Polyphemus traps Odysseus and 12 of his crew in a cave on the
island of Cyclopes, eating several of them before the men attack the monster
with a wooden spike to the eye, blinding the Cyclops and allowing the surviving
men to escape. "I happen to like hideous monsters myself," Showalter
said to PBS. "That's just a personal bias." S/2004 N 1, which orbits
Neptune every 23 hours, is located between the orbits of the moons Larissa
(named after a lover of Poseidon) and Proteus (a Greek sea god, son of Oceanus
and Tethys). Visit the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature for a full list names, naming
requirements and name origins of the all the bodies in the solar system.
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