[meteorite-list] All Hail Eris and Dysnomia (2003 UB313)

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Sep 14 11:28:24 2006
Message-ID: <200609141528.IAA20056_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://skytonight.com/news/home/3916126.html

All Hail Eris and Dysnomia
by David Tytell
Sky & Telescope
September 14, 2006

Remember 2003 UB313, the body often called by its nickname, Xena? On
August 29, 2005, when Michael E. Brown (Caltech) announced his team's
discovery of the distant Kuiper Belt object (KBO), it sent shock waves
through the planetary-science community. Some 75 years after Clyde
Tombaugh discovered Pluto, astronomers had at long last found an
object larger than the "ninth planet." But what to call it? Was it a
planet? A KBO? Something else? For more than a year the distant, icy
body went by a nine-syllable jargony moniker, or by a nickname that
came from a campy television show that starred a warrior princess.
According to International Astronomical Union (IAU) guidelines, how
an object is named depends entirely on how the object is classified.
Planets are named for Roman gods, and classical KBOs are named for
creation gods. But scattered-disk objects (bodies whose orbits are
steeply inclined to the plane of the solar system) don't have naming
conventions. So as long as 2003 UB313 might possibly earn planet
status, it was stuck in naming purgatory.

After much debate, infighting, animosity, and angst, last month the IAU
finally made its decision and decreed that the solar system has just
eight planets. The now-former planet Pluto and 2003 UB313 were both
dubbed "dwarf planets." And with the definitions set, yesterday the IAU
announced the unnamed dwarf planet's new title.

According to the IAU Committee on Small-Body Nomenclature and the
Working Group on Planetary-System Nomenclature, 2003 UB313 will now go
by the name Eris. "The name is fitting," says Brown. Eris is the Greek
goddess of strife and discord. As the story goes, Eris caused wars by
creating infighting among others. Given the turmoil within the
astronomical community surrounding Eris's classification, its name
carries a much deeper, political meaning indeed.

But there's more to the name. "We were sad that Xena went away," says
Brown, so the team held onto her in subtle ways - through the name of
Eris's moon.

The satellite now called Dysnomia, is named for Eris's daughter, the
goddess of lawlessness - a tribute, says Brown, to the actress to who
played Xena, Warrior Princess: Lucy Lawless. But Brown is quick to point
out that the moon also follows another tradition for "dwarf planet"
satellite names: Pluto's moon Charon was discovered in 1978 by James W.
Christy, and the first syllable in Charon matches the first syllable
in Christy's wife's name, Charlene. Brown's wife's name is Diane.
"We're going to call the moon Di," says Brown.

The IAU sub-committees voted nearly unanimously in favor of the two
names (as reported in IAU Circular 8747
<http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/special/08747.pdf>), and the IAU
Executive Committee approved the decision. Suggested names have yet to
be submitted for two of Brown's group's other famous KBOs: 2005 FY9 and
2003 EL61.
Received on Thu 14 Sep 2006 11:28:06 AM PDT