The SETI Institute announced the winning names from their online poll to name two of Pluto’s newly discovered moons yesterday, and Star Trek nerds will be pleased — one of the winning names is Vulcan. William Shatner had put a call out to Star Trek fans to have the moons named Vulcan and Romulus, but Romulus was not eligible because it had nothing to do with the Roman god of the Underworld that the planet is named after (Romulus is the founder of Rome in Roman mythology). Vulcan however, won by a landslide. Vulcan is the god of fire and forge, and is sometimes referred to as a son of Pluto, so it stayed in the running.

The second winning name is Kerberos, the Greek name for Cerberus, the three headed hound that guards the Underworld. The Roman spelling, Cerberus, was technically second in the poll, but was already the name of an asteroid discovered in 1971, so SETI decided to go with the Greek spelling instead.

Technically the names are not official yet, as they have to be approved by the International Astronomical Union. The approval process takes one to two months, but as long as there aren’t any conflicts with the names they should be approved.

[Via Universe Today]

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Megan Patterson is the Science and Technology Editor at Paper Droids and currently a Toronto Standard intern. She has also written for WORN Fashion Journal, Elevate, and Salon Magazines. She also tweets more than is healthy or wise. 

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