The campaign by fans to name one of Pluto’s two moons Vulcan has succeeded. The name won by a landslide with 174,062 votes.
Second place went to “Cerberus”
The Pluto Rocks web site handled the voting for the two recently discovered Plutonian moons.
Pluto Rocks, which is associated with the SETI Institute, is quick to point out on its website that the official final naming selections still need to be made and it might be 1-2 months before moons P4 and p5 become forever known as Vulcan and Cerberus.
It’s cool, but still a missed opportunity. I’m waiting for the day where we name a moon “That’s no moon! 😉
OK, so let me make this argument again for the sake of those who can’t seem to figure things out.
They named a moon on the outer most regions of our Solar system, probably the absolute coldest places in our Solar System after the Roman God of Fire.
What was wrong with Hoth? Too cold?
Why not name it Irony?
Sometimes I’m embarrassed among the realm of Nerd and Geeks.
Did you read the part on the Pluto Rocks website about how historically, planets and moons in our solar system are named after Greek and Roman gods, and how Vulcan was one of the options made available on the short list that they wanted the public to weigh in on using as a name for one of the two new moons?
They put Vulcan down as one option on a list of names they threw out to the public to choose from, and the geeks ran with it, likely with help from publicity from Shatner and a few other folks whom geeks read.
Also, there’s zero chance of Lucasfilm (now Disney) suing anyone over using the name Vulcan. Not so much with trying to use the name Hoth. Sad, but likely true.
What I’d really like to see is when we start naming planets and moons beyond our solar system, that we expand the options to include the names of Egyptian and Norse gods and demigods. But maybe that’s just me.
Or Summer, even go further out on that limb and include Sumerian/Babylonian gods of the Annunaki like Enlil, Enki, Marduk and Anu.
I think they may already be using some of those for some of the larger objects in the asteroid belt… but I could be wrong.