‘Vulcan’ loses bid for moon moniker
Pluto’s orbs are dubbed Styx and Kerberos, despite a global campaign.
Sorry, William Shatner. The International Astronomical Union decided not to name either of Pluto’s two smallest moons after Mr. Spock’s home planet of Vulcan, despite an online campaign that garnered global support for the “Star Trek” star’s suggestion.
Vulcan was the top votegetter during a “Pluto Rocks” contest to come up with official names for the moons previously known as P4 and P5.
According to results released by election organizer Mark Showalter, a planetary astronomer with the SETI Institute, Vulcan blew away the competition with 174,062 votes from people all over the world.
Coming in a distant second with 99,432 votes was Cerberus, the Roman name for the three-headed dog that guards the entrance to the underworld in classical mythology. Third place went to Styx, the Greek name for the river separating Earth from the underworld, with 87,858 votes.
“They didn’t name the moon Vulcan. I’m sad.” Shatner tweeted Tuesday morning after the IAU announced its decision. (In an earlier tweet, he noted that “Vulcan won in a landslide.”)
Instead, the IAU — which describes itself as “the internationally recognized authority for assigning designations to celestial bodies and surface features on them” — went with Kerberos for P4 and Styx for P5. Kerberos is the Greek version of Cerberus; the name was changed “to avoid confusion with an asteroid called 1865 Cerberus,” the IAU explained in Tuesday’s announcement.
Cerberus and Styx were leading the contest until Shatner suggested Vulcan in a Feb. 12 tweet.
He also proposed the name Romulus, in honor of the home planet of the Star Trek beings known as Romulans.
But that never even made it to the online ballot, because the solar system already has a moon named Romulus — it orbits the asteroid Sylvia, along with another moon called Remus.
What about Vulcan? This was tricky too, because the name had already been used to describe a planet once thought to orbit even closer to the sun than Mercury. The hypothetical planet never materialized, but the name stuck.
“Although this planet was found not to exist, the term ‘vulcanoid’ remains attached to any asteroid existing inside the orbit of Mercury, and the name Vulcan could not be accepted for one of Pluto’s satellites,” the IAU said. Shatner wasn’t having it. “So they name a moon Kerebus because there’s already a Cerebus asteroid but a mythological planet knocks out Vulcan?” he tweeted.
Later, Shatner accused the powers that be of being partial to “Star Wars.”