Airplanes are leaving from the airport

[sovay]

I am back from the ICFA in Orlando. On the whole, I had a very good time—the reading went well, I met some wonderful people, and I have copies of Guy Gavriel Kay's Beyond This Dark House (2003) and Peter S. Beagle's We Never Talk About My Brother (2009), among other books. I heard papers on the science fiction poetry of Phyllis Gotlieb, the Paris Morgue, present-day Elizabethan theater; I should have written papers on The Last Unicorn and A Tale of Time City. After dark one night, Eric and I played basketball on the hotel's court, lit up arc-white. I forgot to bring my bathing suit again.

I love flying in and out of Boston. The plane wheels in over the water, last night as dark as fishskin and pleated in swells beneath a pure red after-sunset, the whole bar of the horizon cinnabar under ink-spreads of cloud; the channel buoys held on and off like fireflies, green, red, flickering sea-paths back and forth between the islands, whitewater flecks out of the dusk. There were thunderheads building when we took off from Orlando. I think we confuse in-flight snacks and seatbelt signs with domestication of sky and sea, so that clouds become less relevant than however many channels you can watch from the screens on the back of each seat, the sun in the stratosphere is an interference. Nothing is really tame. We just like to think so; and are surprised when people drown.

Comments

[selidor]

Thesan would also be lovely. But it has to be a chthonic deity, and the usual IAU Minor Planets Committee rule is that moons should be mythologically related to their primary's name.

The universe needs more Etruscan names.
Definitely. Thank goodness the outer solar system is more mythologically diverse than it used to be...

[sovay]

But it has to be a chthonic deity, and the usual IAU Minor Planets Committee rule is that moons should be mythologically related to their primary's name.

Excellent. I assumed that was a courtesy, not a rule; I am pleased to discover otherwise.

Thank goodness the outer solar system is more mythologically diverse than it used to be...

If there are not already objects named Nergal, Ereškigal, Namtar, there totally should be.

[selidor]

The full set of rules are here: "Expanding on past practice, satellites of minor planets will, where possible and appropriate, receive names closely related to the name of the primary and suggesting the relative sizes. For example, binary transneptunian objects of comparable size should receive the names of twins or siblings, consistent with the current principle of using names of gods of creation or the underworld."

If there are not already objects named Nergal, Ereškigal, Namtar, there totally should be.
Not yet. Nergal is a little too closely associated with Mars, but the other two would be fine.
Though the trans-Neptunian objects have been going with Inuit (Sedna), Hawaiian (Haumea, Namaka, Hi'iaka), Rapa Nui (Makemake), Native American (Quaoar, Teharonhiawako) and Vedic (Varuna) mythologies in the last wee while. Not doing too bad ;)

[sovay]

For example, binary transneptunian objects of comparable size should receive the names of twins or siblings, consistent with the current principle of using names of gods of creation or the underworld.

Thanks!

Nergal is a little too closely associated with Mars, but the other two would be fine.

Nergal has not got much to do with Mars past the planet: he is war and pestilence, the destroying sun of high summer, a consort of Ereškigal and therefore president in some of his own right over the underworld; I wouldn't mind him as the father of my foundation myth, but I think the Romans would have been a little weirded out.

. . . or do you mean that since he is associated with the planet, he already missed out on eponymy because Phobos and Deimos were all the moons Mars got? In which case, never mind.

[selidor]

I wouldn't mind him as the father of my foundation myth, but I think the Romans would have been a little weirded out.

*laughs*

Now, the real naming issue will start if anyone finds something bigger than Eris. Does it have to be Greco-Roman deities again at that point? Should be fun...

You might also be interested in the conversation here on Solar System naming from a Southern Hemisphere perspective.

[sovay]

Now, the real naming issue will start if anyone finds something bigger than Eris. Does it have to be Greco-Roman deities again at that point?

Because all the other dwarf planets are? The more mythologies, the better. (Assuming, obviously, someone knows what they're doing with more mythologies. Greco-Roman, even Etruscan is safe: if you botch the associations completely, the worst that happens is classicists laugh at you for years. Screw up Inuit or Vedic, people will care.)

[selidor]

Hmm, yes. At the time Eris was named, there was the possibility that Eris would be classed as the 10th planet, so for continuity with the other planets, Greco-Roman was good. But now all these trans-Neptunian things are dwarf planets anyway, Eris/Makemake/Haumea - so even if one turns up that is bigger than Eris, I think you're right: the 'is this a planet' issue won't crop up in any serious way and pressure the choice of naming mythology to be Greco-Roman, so we'll keep the mythological diversity.

*is happy*