Trekker power is an awesome thing: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/sciencefair/2013/02/25/pluto-moon-vulcan-shatner/1947565/
It would have been more logical to call it Rupert…
My vote would have been for Mickey.
Vulcan isn’t necessarily a Star Trek reference. I don’t doubt that the scientists naming it appreciate the double meaning, but this is in line with the classical mythological names given to other objects in the solar system.
Fascinating!
What a strange and inappropriate choice of name. Vulcan was the god of fire and volcanoes. Why name a body so cold and remote after him?
Vulcan was the name once given to a hypothetical planet inside Mercury’s orbit. (It’s been proved not to exist) That was an appropriate name, if it had been real.
Proserpina would have been appropriate. She was Pluto’s wife.
Yes. Live long and Prosperina.
Yeah, what happened to giving planetary satellites names appropriate to the myths surrounding the planet’s name? (Already broken, of course, with Uranus’s Shakespearean/Popish-named moons, but still…)
As the article noted, Vulcan was Pluto’s nephew.
Yeah, but the Roman/Greek gods were a big old Hillbilly Holler with the inbreeding and such. With that kind of reasoning you could pretty much just stick any of the Olympians’ names on any moon in the system…
Or Cerberus!
Nice early birthday present for Leonard Nimoy!
Now that’s just silly. Who’d name a moon after an aardvark?
Nothing’s been named “Goofy” yet.
Dang; ninja’d by panache45.
Okay, then instead, I’ll say “Why Rupert, MacTech?”
Nice.
They should have named it Palin.
I had to google it.