Pluto Moon's New Name - Kerberos

[DMagic]

Naysayers may claim that Kerberos is just another spelling for Cerberus, but we all know the real reason behind the new name.

http://www.iau.org/public_press/news/detail/iau1303/

[Moon Goddess]

Why let us even vote on Vulcan just to shoot it down and be like "Ha, we were never going to let that be the real name"

If it's not eligible why put it on the vote.

[Xiphos]

Kerberos is actually the Greek Spelling of Cerberus. They renamed it so it would not be confused with asteroid 1865 Cerberus. Says so at the bottom of the article you linked to. Nonetheless, I will be naming a Eloo Vessel Kerberos. Sounds pretty cool.

[um3k]

That vote was unofficial, Moon Goddess.

[Razorcane]

Kerberos is actually a technology developed by MIT, but I doubt it's based on that.

[Nexustrimean]

Kerberos is the Greek spelling of Cerberus, The 3 headed dog that guards the gates of hell, quite fitting with the other moon being named styx, the river that runs through hell.

[JeanHavoc]

Vulcan never made sense as a name for a tiny moon of Pluto anyway. Historically speaking, it was a name given to a planet that was inferred to exist between the orbit of Mercury and the Sun. Naturally no such world exists, but that fact combined with the provenance of the Roman God always left me with an impression of a place made inhospitable by heat and violent geological upheaval. Needless to say such things do not apply in anyway to the deep freeze that is the Kuiper Belt. All I can figure is people really love Star Trek and they must have thought this was their chance to undo what had been done in the 2009 feature film. Whatever the motivation, I can't bring myself to agree; incidentally my personal choices were Acheron and Lethe.

[SuperWeegee4000]

I didn't even know Pluto had any moons.

[stupid_chris]

I didn't even know Pluto had any moons.

It has quite a few IIRC, it's even considered a binary system by some with it's biggest moon Charon

[DMagic]

Yeah, Charon is really big compared to Pluto. Sort of like Ike compared to Duna in KSP. It's about half the diameter of Pluto, and the fact that they orbit each other is one of the reasons why Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Here is a great comparison of some of the dwarf planets. Kerberos is S/2011 and Styx is S/2012; these are something like Gilly to Minmus sized moons, very tiny. And you can see that Pluto isn't even the biggest dwarf planet, Eris is a bit bigger.

[Motokid600]

Why all of a sudden these moons are popping up? Is this new data from New Horizons? Because that thing is due to reach Pluto next year. Not long at all. Cannot WAIT for those pictures.

Edited July 3, 2013 by Motokid600

[ZingidyZongxxx]

Yeah, Charon is really big compared to Pluto. Sort of like Ike compared to Duna in KSP. It's about half the diameter of Pluto, and the fact that they orbit each other is one of the reasons why Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Here is a great comparison of some of the dwarf planets. Kerberos is S/2011 and Styx is S/2012; these are something like Gilly to Minmus sized moons, very tiny. And you can see that Pluto isn't even the biggest dwarf planet, Eris is a bit bigger.

Somewhat random, but I think a Sedna like planet in KSP would be cool. It has a very weird orbit.

[DMagic]

Why all of a sudden these moons are popping up? Is this new data from New Horizons? Because that thing is due to reach Pluto next year. Not long at all. Cannot WAIT for those pictures.

All four of Pluto's new moons have been discovered in the past 10 or 15 years using images from Hubble. New Horizons should give us much better images of Pluto, and I assume Charon, but I'm not sure if it will be able to get good images of the smaller moons.

I assume most of the other dwarf planets have been discovered with Hubble as well. But there have also been a lot of advances with ground based telescopes. There are new techniques that can remove a lot of the distortion and interference caused by the atmosphere for visible light wavelengths.