Naming of Pluto’s Two Moons Closes Feb 25th
Two more Moons for Pluto, god of Hades
Votes for the names of Pluto’s newly discovered moons–P4 in 2011 and P5 in 2012–is open until noon on February 25th (link below) and Star Trek’s William Shatner is favoring and tweeting about “Vulcan” for one of the moons in honor of Dr. Spock’s reputed home planet.
Actually, the name “Vulcan” already appears in Astrology and is related in meaning to a hypothetical Uranian planet, Vulcanus (power; force; fated happenings.)
In Greek Mythology, Hephaistos [Latin: Vulcan) was told by Zeus to create the first woman, Pandora, as a punishment to mankind. Being of a Pandoric persuasion myself, I consider this to be perverted misogynistic hogwash! We women are an evolutionary improvement over man, imho.
Anyway, back to the forge, where Vulcan’s fire molds metals into weapons for primal violence. Here’s what my 1948 copy of DeVore’s Encyclopedia says about Vulcan:
“An hypothetical planet, much conjectured among ancient astrologers, the orbit of which is supposed to lie inside that of Mercury. Astronomers have so far found no justification for any assumption of its existence.”
And of course, Mercury orbits close to the Sun where the temperature is just what a blacksmith prefers.
Here’s a link to an article with video of SETI Institute’s Mark Showalter discussing Pluto and his discovery of its two additional moons.
Vote at Pluto Rocks!
