Thursday, June 22, 2006

Pluto Moons



This photo taken by the Hubble Space telescope and released by NASA shows the planet Pluto, center, with its two newly named moons, from far right, Hydra and Nix, respectively. Pluto's other moon, Charon, is seen closest to Pluto.

So much for the names Xena and Gabrielle.

11 comments:

David Amulet said...

I think I would have named them Ren and Stimpy. Or perhaps Beavis and Butthead. Just to throw the stuff astronomers for a loop.

-- david

cube said...

I love Ren & Stimpy! I could definitly go for that, but I didn't know those names were in the running.

Marti said...

LMAO! I like Ren and Stimpy too!
Or Donald and Mickey (too much Disney at our house, I fear LOL)

That's really cool! Thanks for sharing!

tlm said...

[fuming]

I'm sorry to get geeky here, cube, but I'm incensed about this "Nix" thing.

It's Nyx. Nyx! Nyx! NYX!!!... You know what happened here, right, cube? Some NASA liberals felt they could just rewrite mythology and nobody would be the wiser!

The asteroid of the same name needs to be changed. Because moons are way cooler and more important than asteroids (even moons of wannabe planets like Pluto). Everyone knows that.

Jamie Dawn said...

Your title made me visualize Pluto (the cartoon dog) mooning.

cube said...

tlm: there are 3908 reasons why I think you are right about Nyx.

j.d.: now there's an image.

Caz said...

Beautiful, beautiful pic.

birdwoman said...

so you're saying we should nix Nix for Nyx?

(*)>

cube said...

birdwoman: there already is a near-Earth object named Nyx 3908 so, actually they nixed Nyx for Nix ;-)

Brooke said...

You say nix, I say nyx...

cube said...

brooke: I agree. I think a moon trumps a near-Earth object.

BTW do you say toe-may-toe or toe-mah-toe? ;-)