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‘Vulcan’ leads in poll to name new Pluto moons

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Pluto's moons

Calling all space nuts. Or at least those who haven’t heard. There’s a poll in progress to name Pluto’s two most recently discovered moons, currently designated P4 and P5. Voting ends at 12 pm EST Monday, so if you haven’t voted yet, you can still have your say.

William Shatner suggested one of the moons be named be name Vulcan, Spock’s home planet in the Star Trek series. And Vulcan was leading the pack with more than 100,000 of the 325,800 votes cast as of February 19. Cerberus and Styx were in second and third place respectively. The public vote is not binding, but SETI officials will take it into account when making their recommendation to the International Astronomical Union, the organization ultimately responsible for naming the moons.

Several new write-in names were added to the list on February 14, so if you voted earlier, you might want to check back. You can vote once a day until the poll closes.

Letting the general public in on the naming of objects in space is a great idea. It generates interest and makes space exploration something for everyone, not just for the scientific community.

(Pluto, once considered one of Earth’s nine planets, was demoted to “dwarf planet” in 2006.)

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SusanR

Susan Richards is a retired editor living in Thornton, Colo., near the family and mountains she loves. Her long-standing Pied Type blog contains some 3,800 posts dating back to 2002.

Categories Sci/Tech, space19 Comments

19 thoughts on “‘Vulcan’ leads in poll to name new Pluto moons”

    1. The pair would be great, but I read in one article that Romulus had already been assigned to something else. I voted for Vulcan and as it happened, Cerberus, before reading how the voting was going. I love such polls. There are no greater “lay” or “civilian” fans of space exploration than scifi fans.

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  2. I agree that anything that gets people involved is a great idea PT. As for as the names for Pluto’s newest moons, I think Jim’s suggestion of Vulcan and Romulus sounds pretty darned cool – though I suspect Star Trek fans might later wish they’d held out for a more “significant” uses. After all, at the rate they’re discovering planets around other stars, more “appropriate” bodies will inevitably be found. 😉

    On the lighter side, it’s a good thing that Pluto doesn’t harbor intelligent life, because they’d surely question the arrogance of single-mooned beings demoting their world from full-planet status – beings that have never gotten around to formally naming their own satellite! 😆

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    1. Heh, I’d never thought of that. Our moon isn’t named, is it? How lame is that? Well, if one of Pluto’s moons doesn’t get named Vulcan, maybe Trekkies should lobby to name our moon Vulcan. But I guess that wouldn’t be in keeping with the fictional Vulcan being far away. And it would sure wreak havoc with a lot of existing song lyrics …

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      1. I’d never thought of that either. Our moon isn’t named. Now that would be a way NASA could generate some cash… Have a big “name our moon” contest. And also suggest donations…

      2. One could make a case for the Latin name for our moon I suppose, i.e., Luna. As for Pluto:

        Poor Pluto, whirling in a tilted orbit
        Is now demoted, status forfeit.
        Sharing fate in the debate
        With little asteroids and Charon.

        What’s the difference in a name I say?
        Space hasn’t changed in any way.
        It’s only we who can’t agree
        And mostly astronomers a’carin’.

      3. Clever! Did you write that? Didn’t know you were a poet, too.

        Luna would be lovely, but then, that isn’t really naming it either. It’s always been luna in Spanish and Italian. (Love those romance languages.)

    1. Me too. Seems like everybody wins with a choice like Vulcan. An acknowledgement, a tip of the hat to the general public’s interest. The only scientist with an intense vested interest would be whoever discovered the moons, and if their names were going to be attached, that would already have happened.

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      1. No, no, PT – there’s a tradition for naming stuff the opposite of what it is. Consider “Iceland”, land of volcanoes, or how about “Greenland”, mostly one giant glacier. 😀

  5. Pingback: ‘Vulcan’ and ‘Cerberus’ win poll | Pied Type

... and that's my two cents