Vulcan and Cerberus win votes for Pluto's Moons.

From Space.com

The votes are in, and it looks like 'Vulcan' could be the new name for one of Pluto's smallest moons. After weeks of online ballot casting by people around the world, the poll asking the public to name two of Pluto's moons — currently called P4 and P5 — ended today (Feb. 25).

Apparently William Shatner helped get the idea of one of them being named Vulcan after pulling for it on Twitter. Here is one of his tweets:

"174,062 votes and Vulcan came out on top of the voting for the naming of Pluto's moons. Thank you to all who voted! MBB," wrote Shatner via Twitter.

Setting aside "Vulcan" from Star Trek and images of Mr. Spock coming to mind, the name suggestion makes sense because Vulcan was the greek god of fire and was Pluto's nephew.

Both names still have to be approved by the IAU however. So it's up to them now.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, Vulcan and Cerberus have come out as the top names in the vote to decide what to call the two Pluto moons that haven’t been officially named yet. The fourth and fifth moons of Pluto, discovered in recent years, are designated as P4 and P5 and need new names. SETI Institute and Mark Showalter, who discovered P5, are preparing to propose names for the moons to the International Astronomical Union and asked people to vote or make suggestions. After 450,000 votes, Vulcan came out as the clear favorite with 174,000 votes. While Vulcan is the name of a Roman god, the god of fire, lava and volcanoes, as is required, it got picked because of its connection with Star Trek, Vulcan is the home planet of Spock. In fact, it was Captain James Kirk himself that proposed the name, it was not part of the first batch of names put forward. Cerberus was the second most voted name with close to 100,000 votes. There are no guarantees that these are the two names that will be proposed or that they will be picked by the IAU. The whole process will take a couple of more months.

Wonderful find Erik

Star Trek always was and still is "Kirk and Spock" !!
Shatner created visions and dreams in me i can never forget !!
He deserves it to name this moon "Vulcan"

P5


William Shatner












Vulcan






S&F for you Erik
Nerd Power

What a legend William Shatner is!

Although if I were him I would have opted to name it "Shatnav"

Allthough I like both names, the S.T. planet Vulcan always appeared very large to me.

The Vulcan god is the god of fire. Is there much fire action happening on either of the 2 moons?
In fact I am assuming the word volcano was derived from the name Vulcan.

I don't know about Cerberus.
Maybe it looks like multiple heads.

Originally posted by azureskys
Allthough I like both names, the S.T. planet Vulcan always appeared very large to me.

The Vulcan god is the god of fire. Is there much fire action happening on either of the 2 moons?
In fact I am assuming the word volcano was derived from the name Vulcan.

I don't know about Cerberus.
Maybe it looks like multiple heads.

edit on 26-2-2013 by azureskys because: add on

I always thought Mercury should have been called Vulcan. Or after Voyager 1 and 2 revealed what Io looked like and all the volcanic activity we should have changed it's name to Vulcan.

Just my 2 cents.

Vulcan deserves to be a planet, not a moon. I voted for "Cerebus," although Styx would also be appropriate.

Originally posted by DJW001
Vulcan deserves to be a planet, not a moon. I voted for "Cerebus," although Styx would also be appropriate.

Styx ????

Please don't